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The University of Chicago 


STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


A DISSERTATION 


SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS 
AND LITERATURE IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE 
OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 


(DEPARTMENT OF GREEK) 


BY 
JOHN LEONARD HANCOCK 


A Private Edition 
Distributed By 
The University of Chicago Libraries 





A Trade Edition Is Published By 
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PREFACE 


The following dissertation aims to be a grouping of facts, not new 
to humanist scholars in the several fields, into a comprehensive treat- 
ment, a non-technical presentation of a literary subject concerning 
which, too often, knowledge is taken for granted. Problems of philology 
and text criticism are only incidental to its main purpose. The chapters 
on drama subsequent to the Greek and Latin are admittedly from the 
layman’s point of view. The chapter on particles and stylistic devices 
is distinct in treatment from the rest. The dissertation differs, in this 
avoidance of technicalities and in the extent of literature considered, 
from the only notable work on the subject known to me, Die Stichomythie 
in der griechischen Tragédie und Komédie, ihre Anwendung und thr 
Ursprung, by Adolf Gross (Berlin, 1905). His treatment is more objec- 
tive than subjective, and reference lists add to the value of his book. 
In the many places where our discussions overlap, note has been made 
of the fact in footnotes. I must differ from him in his thesis that sticho- | 
mythia developed from choral responsion, while admitting the consider- 
able part such musical symmetry must have played. Maccari, in a 
little pamphlet, Stichomythica (Urbini, 1911), has touched (rather 
gropingly) on the place of stichomythia in comedy, an interesting topic 
but outside the limits of this dissertation. The few earlier papers and 
monographs on the whole subject are either attempts to restore absolute 
symmetry in line-dialogue by text revisions, or are too vaguely general 
as compared with the modern treatment of Gross. 

The subject was suggested to me by Professor Paul Shorey, and has 
been carried on at all stages under his guidance, my appreciation of 


which I wish here to record. 
J. Leonarp HANcock 
UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS 
September, 1916 


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CONTENTS 


PAGE 


INTRODUCTION : 5 : : 5 Σ : : : k : I 
CHAPTER 
I. STICHOMYTHIA IN THE GREEK DRAMA ..... aie ash water 5 
ΠῚ ΞΘ TICHOMYV THEA: IN) SENECA UH τ Milluatl) ih τ ἀπ dye ernie 23 
III. Use oF PARTICLES AND SPECIAL DEVICES IN STICHOMYTHIA . 26 
IV. PLATONIC DIALOGUE AND STICHOMYTHIA . . . . : 50 
V. STICHOMYTHIA IN LATER DRAMA .. ἷ ; : 2 ; 5 61 
A. Mediaeval Latin. A 2 : ι : : ; : 61 
ΒΕ ΤΠ balay whet, aise nurs etre Moun Vane len st ds So ἢ-: 64 
Carly, Mrench tentative uiheriiecs an on Nine Maint nent 66 
ΤῈ arly Meuse aul τ Naame remit Wren Wee arena Ns 71 
Shakespeare ly cu tions) tim tio ui Νὴ nite ot one. ay) Bue caine 80 
VI. STICHOMYTHIA IN MODERN DIALOGUE . ᾿ : iy Ses : 87 
ENDER ΝΑ ΑΛ να Mita τ ἡ να Ted eae ΤΟ 89 















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x a 


INTRODUCTION 


In its perfected and unbroken form Greek stichomythia is a growth 
which could never have been achieved elsewhere. Oriental subtlety 
of expression combines with occidental conciseness of phrase in a sym- 
metry which owes its inspiration to Greek love of balance and formal 
beauty. This symmetry reaches its climax in stichomythia but is not 
unique here, for we see it evident? in choral responsion in the drama, 
in the primitive songs and children’s rhymes (though this is true in all 
lands), in the balanced clauses invented and delighted in by the Greek 
rhetoricians, in amoebean verse—though this may be only an echo of 
dramiatic line-dialogue. So, too, the love of subtlety is apparent—and 
from the earliest times expressed in the concise phrase—in the early 
γνῶμαι of the sages,‘ the traditional and characteristic responses of oracles, 
the quibbles of the Sophists, the artifices of professional law-court 
speeches, and even in language forms and inflections, and the large use 
of particles and idioms. Just so in English, slang adopts the subtlest, 
most metaphorical, yet most concise phraseology. 

But all this brevity and cleverness is really only a weapon for the 
agonistic spirit which motivates most of the stichomythia and pervades 
all Greek literature. The earliest and greatest epic poem centered about 
a quarrel. The first book of the Iliad is a very agonistic dramatic 
extract, lacking only stichomythic parts to give it the general form of 
a scene from an Attic play. The traditional contest between Hesiod 
and Homer: is a curious addition to the list of agonistic literature. It 
is mentioned—and usually with entire confidence—by a dozen writers, 
including Varro (ap. Gellius), Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch, and Lucian. 
According to Kirchoff® this odd literary forgery dates back to Alcidamas 
of Elea, the opponent of Isocrates, in a fragment of whose Μουσεῖον 


τ Gross, pp. 95 ἢ. 
2 Perhaps also in the dithyramb; cf. Bacchyl. 18, a lyric dialogue. 
3 More or less true of the proverbs of all nations. 


4 Miiller and Donaldson, History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, I, 418: “The 
arrangement of the dialogue is remarkable for that studious attention to regularity 
and symmetry which distinguishes Greek art.” 


5 Rzach, Wiener Studien, XIV, 139-44. 
6 Sitzungsberichte d. Berl. Akad., XCII, 865-91. 


I 


2 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


Petrie found part of the “Ay#v. In other words, as early as the latter 
half of the third century before Christ this poetical contest was pro- 
duced and accepted as a reasonable thing. Surely, then, as a basis for 
this belief there must have been other poetical contests of this nature 
in Greece. Some suggestion may have come from the contest between 
Aeschylus and Euripides in the Frogs, yet the spirit and the method 
here are essentially different. The ᾿Αγών is not a contest in art between 
two masters of poetry, but a clash of wits, a quibbling over meanings 
of words and phrases. It appealed, not to Greek love of truth, but to 
Greek love of a clever debate. 

After the placid didacticism of Hesiod and the elegiac poets (unless 
we except Xenophanes) the agonistic spirit crops out again in the bitter 
iambics of Archilochus and Hipponax, but it was limited by itsform. In 
drama, however, both tragedy and comedy, it came into its own. The 
very nature of drama involves the conflict of wills or personalities. 
In the growth of tragedy from the dithyramb, this, to us, very obvious 
fact was overshadowed by the prominence of the chorus and the lack 
of emphasis upon the plot. But by the time of Aeschylus the agonistic 
element in a play was the central interest. Even in the Supplices this 
is true, perhaps even in the Persae, though here the conflict is rather 
within ourselves, between our exultation and our sympathy. In the 
Supplices there is but one agonistic stichomythia; in the Persae, none 
at all which might be strictly so called; yet in the Prometheus, the 
Septem, and the Oresteia they are common. The beginnings of comedy 
certainly involve agonistic elements, especially in the rude play of wits 
of the speeches ἐξ ἁμάξης. A good part of the fun of comedy lies in the 
exaggerations and the piled-up epithets of characters matched against 
each other. More than that, the skeleton of every Aristophanic play 
has as its backbone an ἀγών between two ideas represented as a rule by 
the two principal actors, or, better, for and against the absurd idea or 
scheme proposed by one party. Take this ἀγών away and you would 
have no more plot than in a modern comic opera. 

Meanwhile in the field of prose the argumentative instinct was 
proving an important factor. Granting that the spirit of inquiry and 
the love of truth were at the root of Greek philosophy, we must yet 
recognize that the fondness for debate per se was an efficient cause of 
the rapid and extensive growth of that study. Even Socrates did not 
hesitate to use specious arguments and to quibble over meanings of 
words or phrasings of sentences, provided that it led to a realization 
of the imperfections of existing definitions. Indeed he delighted in argu- 


INTRODUCTION 3 


ing with the man wise in his own eyes for the mere satisfaction of non- 
plussing him, with or without progress toward truth. That this was 
true of the rhetoricians and the Sophists is perhaps the best founded 
of the charges against them. Just so now the complaint is often made 
that college debating trains men to care nothing for the truth, but 
everything for outwitting the opponent. Yet the Sophists merely exag- 
gerated the popular Greek tendency and themselves became unpopular 
simply because of their over-cleverness. In the law courts of Athens 
we see a less exaggerated but clearly marked form of the same agonistic 
spirit. It is hard for us to imagine a state of things in which men count 
it a privilege to sit on the jury, yet more than ro per cent of Athenian 
citizens were drawn annually and listened with pleasure—possibly with 
judgment—to the pleadings of plaintiff and defendant. That jury 
service became a vocation for some enthusiasts is clear from even the 
humorous exaggeration of Aristophanes’ Wasps. It is equally hard to 
imagine the professional lawyer out of existence and each man his own 
advocate, yet it is merely a manifestation of the same instinct. 

In the pastoral verse of Theocritus and his imitators the stichomythic 
form is evidently an affectation. In the fourth Idyl of Theocritus the 
dialogue is one of question and answer only. In the eighth, Daphnis 
and Menalcas very deliberately work up to their contest of skill: 


6. M.: μυκητᾶν ériovpe βοῶν Aadu, λῇς μοι ἀεῖσαι; 
΄ ~ Ψ ,, ΘΕ τῆς SiS 
φαμί τυ νικασεῖν ὅσσον θέλω αὐτὸς ἀείδων. 
9. D.: ποιμὴν εἰροπόκων ὀίων, συρικτὰ Μενάλκα, 
οὔποτε νικασεῖς μ᾽, οὐδ᾽ εἴ τι πάθοις τύ γ᾽ ἀείδων. 
M.: χρήσδεις ὧν ἐσιδεῖν; χρήσδεις καταθεῖναι ἄεθλον; 
D.: χρήσδω τοῦτ᾽ ἐσιδεῖν, χρήσδω καταθεῖναι ἄεθλον. 
M.: καὶ τίνα θησεύμεσθ᾽ ὅτις ἁμῖν ἄρκιος εἴη; 
1).: μόσχον ἐγὼ θησῶ: τὺ δὲ θὲς ἰσομάτορα ἀμνόν. 
25. D.: ἀλλὰ τίς ἄμμε κρινεῖ; τίς ἐπάκοος ἔσσεται ἁμέων; 
In other words, the natural ἀγών is here formalized. In the twenty- 
second, the Hymn to the Dioscuridae, we find a more natural and so more 
spirited quality in the dialogue between Polydeuces and Amycus: 
54. Ρ.: χαῖρε ξεῖν᾽, ὅτις ἐσσί. τίνες βροτοί, ὧν ὅδε χῶρος: 
A.: χαίρω πῶς, ὅτε γ᾽ ἄνδρας ὅρω, τοὺς μὴ πρὶν ὄπωπα; 


«So in Vergil’s third Eclogue, which is, of course, in imitation of the fifth and 
eighth of Theocritus. 


4 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


P.: θάρσει: μήτ᾽ ἀδίκους, μήτ᾽ ἐξ ἀδίκων φάθι λεύσσειν. 


A.: θαρσέω: κὄυκ ἐκ σεῦ μὲ διδάσκεσθαι τόδ᾽ ἔοικεν. 


continuing in the same tone and form through vs. 74. 

With this brief review of the elements of stichomythia in other 
literature and literary origins (leaving Platonic dialogue for more detailed 
treatment in a later chapter), we are prepared for the study and analysis 
of true dramatic line-dialogue. 


CHAPTER I 
STICHOMYTHIA IN THE GREEK DRAMA 


Writers have differed and will differ as to a precise definition of 
stichomythia. Polluxt gave the first and narrowest: στιχομυθεῖν δὲ 
ἔλεγον τὸ παρ᾽ ἕν ἰαμβεῖον ἀντιλέγειν, καὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα στιχομυθίαν. The 
latest and most satisfactory formal definition known to me is given 
by Gross: “. . . . eine Stichomythie [ist] vorhanden wenn beide 
Personen, die sich unterhalten, entweder immer je einen Vers sprechen 
oder immer zwei Verse, was man auch Distichomythie nennen kann, oder 
immer nur Halbverse, was man... . Antilabae nennt.’? This limits 
the term rightly in the classical drama and its modern imitations to the 
dialogue parts. Choral responsion, if akin, has acquired a different 
character through its different associations. The word “stichomythia,”’ 
loosely used, covers all balanced lines or half-lines or distichs in dramatic 
dialogue, classical or post-classical, whether (in the latter case) imitation 
or native-born parallel. ‘“‘Line-speech,” subtle and forceful, is not 
Euripidean or Greek or classical, but a universal expression of keen 
minds. It is both a natural variety of conversation and a literary form. 
In modern literature we need to emphasize the latter, less-considered 
aspect. In Greek and Latin we must for the same reason keep well in 
mind the “natural” view.3 This will help us to analyze the literary form 
and understand its development. 

It needs no searching analysis to find as the motives for stichomythia 
the tendencies toward the agonistic, the subtle, and the symmetrical— 
tendencies which were especially marked among the Greeks. In the 
earliest plays of Aeschylus, in the latest “Dolly Dialogue” of our own 
day, these motives are equally apparent. Of course all three are not 
always noticeable in each passage. A question-and-answer stichomythia 
may be absolutely lacking in argument or hidden meaning, as is indeed 
the first one we meet, in Aeschylus’ Supplices. A quarrel scene may be 
so bluntly phrased that it has no subtlety. Many Sophoclean passages 
are admirably agonistic and full of between-the-lines suggestion, and 


ΤΠ 12. 50}. cit., Pp. 9. 

3 Pollux, it is true, gives his definition in a list of words descriptive of the actor’s 
art, not in a list of literary forms, which may indicate that he thought of it as an 
approach to natural conversation rather than as a stilted literary symmetry. 


5 


6 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


yet are purposely a little unsymmetrical. Yet it is significant that those 
stichomythic passages in which all these motives are apparent are the 
ones which most satisfy us. True, a lively conversation is not thus 
symmetrical for longer than a few responses, but there is no denying 
the pleasure which such balance gives in the written dialogue, especially 
where the even lines of verse invite it. And if we moderns find pleasure 
in it, how much more must the Greeks, with their love for beauty and 
perfection of form. So closely linked are the three tendencies of which 
we speak that any theory which would dissociate them in the origin of 
stichomythia must fall, as much from inherent improbability as from 
lack of positive evidence antedating Aeschylus. The purpose, then, of 
the following analysis of stichomythia in the Greek dramatists is not 
to unearth origins, but to study types and tendencies. 

Taking first the Supplices as probably our oldest play, we find in it 
six passages of stichomythia.t The first (206-22), between Danaus and 
the chorus, his daughters, serves merely to give the stage setting and 
afford an opportunity for a tableau of the chorus grouped about the 
altar. It has no agonistic element, but combines in a way question and 
answer with parallel prayer to the gods, not in the emotional tone of 
the kommos, but in a calm, matter-of-fact way. It contains the trick 
of speech characteristic of stichomythic subtlety by which a word of 
the one speaker is picked up and emphasized by the other, but on the 
whole it is not subtle. The second (291-322) is also like a Euripidean 
prologue whose purpose is solely to give the hearers the previous story 
in outline. The Argive king questions the chorus to test their claim 
to Argive descent, and the story of Io and Aegyptus results. Even if, 
with Tucker, we make the chorus the questioner, the motive and pur- 
pose of the stichomythia are unchanged. Then after a little dialogue 
of more natural form comes a fourteen-line passage (333-46) in which 
the chorus urge the king to protect them, and he demurs—a touch of 
the agonistic. Note the argumentative yé—five cases. Here, too, for the 
first time the arguments on both sides are expressed in gnomic and 
rather cryptic utterances. There follow a kommos and two speeches 
by the king with a choral interlude, and the chorus conclude their 
appeal by an enigmatic threat (455-68) to hang themselves if aid be 
not granted. Their riddling words, alternating with the king’s repeated 


τ The style and structure are safer evidences than historical references. T ucker, 
however, finds in the Panhellenic spirit of the play reason to place it about 492, 
when an oriental attack was anticipated. Béckh, Miiller, εἰ αἱ. assign it to 461 on 
political and historical grounds. 


= 


STICHOMYTHIA IN THE GREEK DRAMA 7 


insistence that he does not understand, make a stichomythia very like 
some of Euripides’. Subtlety is here predominant and the feeling is in a 
measure agonistic. Again, at 504 they express a final flutter of fear at 
being left alone, a feeling that the king ridicules. Tucker makes the 
interchange of words here very subtle, but beyond a slight allegorical 
touch the dialogue is perfectly natural.t_ There is not a conflict of tem- 
pers or opinions here, merely one of desires. To that extent it is agonistic. 
Finally in 915-30 we find a line-dialogue between the angry king and 
the herald, of the type of our modern stichomythia—that is, a true 
quarrel scene. Words of the opponent are picked up and hurled back, 
forms of phrase are tauntingly echoed, charges give place to threats, 
all in the space of fifteen lines and without once running over a line or 
requiring a “stop-gap”’ verse.? 

In the Persae, of 472 B.c., there are only a half-dozen lines of stich- 
omythia in iambics, but there are two long passages in trochaic tetram- 
eter. Both are purely question and answer for the sake of information. 
In the first (231-46) the chorus answer Atossa’s innocent inquiries about 
Athens with a very natural effect, each answer suggesting the following 
question, but with no rivalry of wit or feeling. In the second (714-38), 
Atossa gives the ghost of Darius the sad outlines of Xerxes’ defeat. 
Here, too, the eager questions and the balance in form of answer with 
question are perfectly natural. There is nothing agonistic in the passage. 
The four lines of stichomythia at 792 are riddling in character but 
otherwise not noteworthy, merely question and answer. The last 
seventy-five lines of the play consist of an antiphonal lament by Xerxes 
and the chorus of full strophic structure but with the speakers alternating 
in dialogue fashion. It has many tricks of language like those of stich- 
omythia and might serve (together with the similar Septem 961-1004) as 


τ He translates: 

Chorus: Why, how should an open lawn protect me? 

King: Be sure we mean not to deliver you to birds of prey. 

Chorus: But what if to foes more hateful than fell serpents ? 

King: Fair be thy speech, who thyself art spoken fair. 
and expands: ‘‘King: ‘Do not be alarmed; I am not about to put you at the mercy 
of your cousins, as men expose children to be carried off by birds of prey.’ Chorus: 
‘Birds of prey! It is worse than that we fear; worse even than that most loathsome 
thing the serpent. What if you put us at the mercy of such foes as these?’ King: 
‘Your speech is not courteous. I said I should not put you at their mercy, and you 
treat my promise with little respect. I give you fair words and I look to receive them.’” 
And Tucker adds: ‘This is very condensed, but not more so than many other passages 
of στιχομυθία."" 


2 Cf. pp. 39 ff. 


8 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


an argument either for the development of stichomythia from lyrics or 
for the influence of stichomythia on lyrics. Or better still, it shows the 
natural effect of mutual suggestion when two are speaking in alternation, 
either to each other or in lament. 

In the Seven against Thebes, 467 B.c., the case is somewhat different. 
Of the four stichomythic passages, one (803-11) is mere question and 
answer for information, one (712-19) is argument, one (245-64) is the 
passage in which Eteocles berates the frightened chorus, and one (1042- 
53) is pure quarrel between Antigone and the Herald. Of the antiphonal 
chorus of the sisters (961-1004) the same is to be said as of the end of 
the Persae. 

Next in date comes the Oresteia trilogy of 458 B.c. In the Agamem- 
non there are a large number of short stichomythic passages which may 
be characterized briefly. 268-81 would be mere question and answer 
for information but for the incredulity of the chorus which adds insist- 
ence to the words of Clytemnestra. 538-50, on the surface mere by- 
play, but giving a desired effect of gloomy mystery, has a touch of 
opposition in the riddling words of the chorus. The distichs of 629-35 
are unmotivated question and answer. In 931-44 the air is charged 
with hostile feeling. There is a suppressed bitterness beneath the 
surface irritation which shows well in the gnomic phrases of 938 ff. and 
the repetition of γνώμην (932) and νίκην (942). 1202-13 is question and 
answer merely for information. 1246-55 is again an incredulous chorus, 
this time remonstrating with Cassandra instead of Clytemnestra as in 
268-81. 1299-1312 continues in somewhat the same tone. In 1650-54, 
1665-73 the chorus and Aegisthus wrangle in excited trochaic tetram- 
eters, with which the play ends. 

In the Choephori it is difficult to characterize definitely the passages, 
with the exception of one. In 106-23 the chorus instruct Electra how 
to make her vengeance prayer. Yet she really establishes the tendency 
of the thought by her questions.’ So in 164-82 Electra leads an unsus- 
pecting or doubting chorus to share in her own suspicions. Neither of 
these passages is explicitly agonistic, yet there is a matching of wits 
underlying both. In 212-25 Orestes convinces the doubting Electra of 
his identity in what might be called argument. 489-96 is a brief passage 
of antiphonal appeal to the gods in the tone of the long kommos pre- 


τ Verrall, ad. loc.: “Her purpose, as before, is to prompt and draw on the inter- 
locutor, who is so far encouraged by applause as to venture half a step (vs. 116) 
without assistance and finally (vs. 120), not without pride, to complete the step and 
to take the lead.” 


STICHOMYTHIA IN THE GREEK DRAMA 9 


ceding. There is balance but no opposition.’ In 526-35, while the chorus 
tell Clytemnestra’s dream, there is only a suggestion of opposition in 
the surprised interrupting verses of Orestes. 766-70, 774-82 are of 
practically the same type. In 1051-64 the chorus labor with the dis- 
traught Orestes in a series of double verses to which his insistence gives 
a slight tone of opposition. The one purely agonistic passage is 908-30, 
where Clytemnestra pleads with Orestes for her life. All the arts of 
ellipsis, balance, picking up of the opponent’s words, gnomic utterance, 
etc., are here used. 

The Eumenides is the most satisfactory play to analyze, for, because 
of its judicial setting, the stichomythic passages are sharply cut through- 
out.2. The first (200-212) is vigorously agonistic. Apollo is driving the 
polluting Furies away from his sanctuary, and they accuse him of being 
παναίτιος in the murder of Clytemnestra. 225-29 is another bit of the 
same passage-at-arms, following Apollo’s bitter speech and itself followed 
by a three-line declaration of rights by each party. In 418-36 Athena 
questions the Furies sharply as to their motives and evidently looks with 
disfavor on their cause. The tone is not so bitter as in the earlier passage, 
but the opposition is plain. 587-608 is a formal, judicial “‘agon”’ as the 
introduction, 583-86, avows. It is manifestly important in showing a 
motive for such amoebean passages. In 711-30 Apollo and the chorus 
exchange threats and counter-threats in distichs. 744-47 are four lines 
in the style of Choephori 480 ff., g.v. In 892-903 the Furies bargain 
with Athena for honors in case they yield. 

I have left the Prometheus to the last because of the uncertainty 
whether this is an early play or a late edition, worked over in form, of 
the earlier production. The artificiality obvious in parts of the dialogue 
would add to the weight of argument favoring the latter view. Lines 
39-83 are carefully balanced in the novel arrangement of one line to 
two, a method clearly affected, and cleverly so in that it reflects the 
moods of the two workers. There is a subtle opposition of these moods 
without an express opposition of words or ideas. In 246-58 the chorus 
ask for information. Prometheus’ answers are defiant but not toward 


τ In regard to Gross’s use (p. 96) of this passage and Eumenides 744-47 to support 
his theory that stichomythia arose from choral parts and gave rise to dialogue, note 
that this passage contains 23 lines of two- and three-line speeches in the same tone. 
That is, the character of choral responsion here enters into the iambics both in 
stichomythia and in unequal and longer speeches, as is at times perfectly natural. 


2 Note the connection in spirit between stichomythia and Athenian court practices. 
Cipss: 


Io STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


the chorus. It is merely his αὐθαδία showing in all his speech. In 
377-93 Prometheus rejects the offer of Oceanus to intercede with Zeus. 
There is a somewhat greater effect of personal defiance in this. In 515-21 
there is no opposition except that Prometheus keeps his secret from the 
chorus. Likewise in 613-30 there is opposition only in the latter half, 
where Prometheus is unwilling to reveal to Io her future. In 756-79 
we have merely a story told in alternate verses. In 928-37 the chorus 
are skeptical and inclined to give good advice, with a slight tone of 
opposition as the result. Finally, in 964-88 and 997-99 we have a 
strongly agonistic passage, quite artificial in form. 

However unsatisfactory such a hasty analysis of the dialogue pas- 
sages may be, it has at least a negative value. It shows us that from 
the material at hand we cannot deduce one, and one only, original 
motive for stichomythia. Any attempt along that line will be mere 
theorizing for the pleasure of advancing a theory. The positive value 
of our analysis is in showing the motives, both surface and subtle, which 
produce line-dialogue and are visible in it. Speaking broadly, we come 
back to the three main characteristics already mentioned, summed up 
best, perhaps, by Croiset, whose emphasis is placed rightly, I think, 
on the agonistic element. 

Le type le plus charactérisé de ces parties d’entretiens, c’est ce qu’on 
nomme stichomythie: forme de dialogue singuliérement frappante, tout a 
fait comparable ἃ un assaut d’armes, puisque le vers répond au vers comme 
une riposte instantanée répond a une attaque. Toute l’agilité de l’esprit 
grec y entre en jeu; la subtilité logique y vient en aide ala passion. Outre 
le don de l’expression fine et acérée, l’invention prompte des formules concises 
y fait merveille.* 


In analyzing the stichomythic passages of Sophocles, we meet with 
a hindrance which in itself marks an advance in the use of dialogue. 
We no longer have a definite division between rhesis and line-dialogue; 
the one glides into the other through speeches of varying length, and 
two- or three-line speeches crop out in the stichomythia and break up the 
formal symmetry. As a result we get a far more natural effect but meet 
a real difficulty in determining the limits of the stichomythia proper. 
This freedom from formal constraint is greater in Sophocles’ later 
than in his earlier plays. So marked is this, as we shall see, that com- 
parative irregularity of dialogue should constitute one argument in 
determining the date of the uncertain plays. Wilamowitz? and Jebb 


* Histoire, III, τοι. 2 Analecta Euripidea, p. 195. 
3 Introductions to the Electra and the Ajax. 


STICHOMYTHIA IN THE GREEK DRAMA vias 


have already used as an evidence of comparative date the frequency of 
antilabé in the plays, but they went no farther, possibly because they 
distrusted this sort of evidence, probably because it had not occurred 
to them as being valuable. For the present, however, let us take the 
plays in the order in which Jebb placed them, the Antigone first, dated 
about 443 B.C. 

Vss. 39-48 open with a distich spoken by Ismene, and if we keep vs. 
46, Antigone has a distich at this point. Dindorf drops the line. It 
might easily have been added to explain the somewhat condensed thought 
in vs. 45, and, as it stands, slows up the passage decidedly. The lines 
of the stichomythia are rather closely bound together by continued con- 
structions. The horror of Ismene at Antigone’s proposal gives a slight 
spirit of contention. Vss. 78-92 start with two distichs and contain 
two others. The passage is decidedly more agonistic, as both sisters 
are determined. Vss. 215-22 end in a distich. There is no opposition; 
the chorus are submissive to Creon. ‘There follows irregular dialogue 
between the guard and Creon in which single-line speeches occur; then, 
as usual just before the speakers conclude, comes a short passage of 
stichomythia, vss. 315-23. Creon pettishly blames the guard for his 
message, and the latter in the tone and phrases of a Sophist defends 
himself. The extra-metrical φεῦ of 323 becomes from now on a com- 
mon usage.t Vss. 401-6 (with distich 404-5) introduce the guard’s 
story very naturally. Creon is incredulous, the guard matter-of-fact. 
Antigone’s curt and defiant single-line answers to Creon are also very 
natural. The stichomythia which follows, 508-23, is typically Greek. 
A modern writer would hardly have an angry king and a princess in 
peril of death argue a technical point in this dialectic fashion. Yet 
the passage is lively and natural and full of the Athenian subtle and 
argumentative spirit. Vss. 536-77 begin with six distichs and contain 
three more, vss. 559-64. In the first part Antigone refuses Ismene the 
right to share her honor and her fate. At 561 Creon interrupting becomes 
the chief speaker, with Ismene, Antigone, and the chorus alternating in 
response. Vss. 726-55 are introduced by two lines spoken by the chorus 
as peacemaker, Creon and Haemon having just finished their respective 
pleas. Then come two distichs, then a very animated, because very 
quarrelsome, stichomythia. After four lines each by Creon and Haemon, 
the chorus and Haemon each speak a distich, followed by four lines of 


1 Cf. 1048 of this play, Alcestis 536 (438 B.c.), ef passim. Aeschylus has the 
same thing at the beginning of a long speech, Agam. 1215, 1256; Choeph. 1048, or in 
the meter, Agam. 1307; Prom. 742, 980. 


12 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


stichomythia running into Creon’s final speech. Vss. 991-98 between 
Teiresias and Creon serve only to introduce the longer speeches. In 
1048-63, however, the same speakers are quarreling and we have a 
lively interchange of opinions. Finally, in 1098-1108, at the advice of 
the chorus, Creon yields to fate. Distichs and monostichs are mingled 
with no attempt at symmetry. 

The Ajax, though of uncertain date, is surely an early play. In vss. 
38-51 we find narrative told through eager question and answer. This 
is not the calm working out of a story, as in Aeschylus’ Supplices, but a 
rapid piecing together of facts bya man ina hurry. Note καὶ, 4o and 50; 
τὶ δῆτα, 42, and three cases of ἦ καί, 38, 44, 48.1 In 74-88 Odysseus is 
even more excited as Athena calls Ajax out from his tent. Vss. 94-117 
have six distichs set among the single lines. There is no opposition 
expressed in the passage, but to the listener all of Athena’s words would 
be filled with subtle mockery. 265-70 is brief but characteristically 
subtle. The kommos, 330-427, has many stichomythic details, but 
should not, technically, come into our field of investigation. Vss. 525-44 
begin with two distichs, and Tecmessa has a distich when she calls to 
the servants and the boy. There is no controversy in the passage. 
In 585-95 we find two single lines, two distichs, and four lines of antilabé, 
the last speaker taking a line and a half. This is our first instance of 
antilabé, which later became so common, especially in trochaic meters 
and in Seneca’s dramas. It is introduced here at a scene of great excite- 
ment, and Sophocles uses it throughout? only at such points where alone 
it has real excuse for being. In vss. 784-802 we have the most irregular 
passage in the Ajax. The chorus has three lines, Tecmessa and the 
chorus a distich apiece, then Tecmessa one line and the messenger two 
to the end of the passage. It has no trace of quarreling or even argument. 
From 865 to 973 runs a kommos with some interesting details of respon- 
sion. In 975-85 Teucer and the chorus voice an antiphonal lament in 
iambics with irregular verse division. Vss. 1044-51 have nothing unusual 
except the entrance of a new speaker, Menelaus. 1120-41 is the cus- 
tomary ‘‘agon”’ in stichomythic form following the longer speeches of 
the same contestants. As usual in quarrel scenes, it is very lively and 

* See p. 30. 

2 Cf. p. 15 for only exception. 


3 Cf. Antigone 726 ff.; Moulton, Ancient Classical Drama, p. 192: ‘The elaborate 
speeches are usually succeeded by a spell of parallel dialogue, suggestive of cross- 
examination’’; Browning, “‘ Balaustion’s Adventure” (on Alces. 708 ff.): 


And so died out the wrangle by degrees 
In wretched bickering. 


STICHOMYTHIA IN THE GREEK DRAMA 13 


natural. Vss. 1316-31 are composed of single lines and distichs sym- 
metrically arranged. As the feeling becomes stronger, after Odysseus’ 
longer speech, the stichomythia becomes regular and very animated. 
As befits an argument rather than a quarrel, it has a decided tendency 
to the gnomic and the subtle. 

In the Oedipus Rex (dated 429 by K. F. Hermann), of the 1121 
trimeters—I use the figures of Gross'—454 are stichomythic, that is, 
occur in passages stichomythic in form and feeling. For the most part 
we find here natural irregularity and lack of symmetry, but there are 
at least three unbroken passages of considerable length. Distichs in 
series are more noticeably used than in any other of Sophocles’ plays. 
Because of the great number of short dialogue passages a very condensed 
analysis must suffice. Vss. 78-131: mainly distichs but irregular. No 
opposition, merely narrative. Creon enters at 87 and takes the priest’s 
place as respondent. 316 ff.: a long episode, in which Oedipus and 
Teiresias alone appear and in which there is argument or violent alter- 
cation throughout. Distichs 320-40, single lines and distichs 356-79, 
432-46, otherwise irregular, with the usual agonistic rheses, 380-428. 
523-31: chorus and Creon; mainly distichs. 543-83: Creon and 
Oedipus; single and double lines, symmetrically irregular, spirited 
because agonistic. 622-30: same speakers and spirit; runs into antil- 
abé 626 ff. 697 ff.: Iocasta and Oedipus; monostichs and distichs, 
usually symmetrically combined, 697-706, 726-57, 765-70, 834-41, 
859-62, otherwise rheses. No opposition, but eager question and answer 
as Oedipus begins to read the mystery. 924 ff.: episode of the messenger 
from Corinth, Oedipus, Iocasta, and messenger taking part. Very 
irregular, with frequent shift of speakers until 1007-46, where the mes- 
senger reveals to Oedipus part of the mystery of his birth, and 1054-72, 
the impassioned scene between Oedipus and Iocasta. The arrival of 
the old servant brings on another long stichomythia, 1119-77, sprinkled 
with distichs, interrupted by one nine-line speech, and ending in antilabé. 
The servant, as being originally at fault, is throughout on the defensive. 
There are also a few other irregular passages containing stichomythic 
lines, at 276 ff., 523 ff., and 1435 ff., and the play closes with antilabé 
in trochaics between Oedipus and Creon, 1515-23, not so violent as in 
their earlier quarrel scenes, but still with the bitterness of friends become 
enemies. 

The Electra is more regular in its stichomythia than the Oedipus Rex, 
though it is undoubtedly later (ca. 420 B.c.?). True, it has more cases 


HOP Git. Pe 5Ὲ- 


14 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


of a speech beginning or ending in the middle of a line than any other 
play of Sophocles except the Philoctetes,t but these breaks, for the most 
part, occur in passages already lacking in stichomythic symmetry. 
Distichs and single lines are freely but symmetrically mingled, but there 
are at least three long passages of rigid stichomythia. Vss. 310-23: 
distichs and single lines; Electra and chorus; gives setting to the story. 
385-416: spirited and natural, though rigid in form; Electra opposed 
to Chrysothemis, like Antigone or Prometheus in spirit. 622-33: distichs; 
Clytemnestra against Electra in vigorous opposition. 660-79: announce- 
ment of the old man to Clytemnestra and Electra that Orestes is dead; 
symmetrically irregular and very lifelike. 790-98: mixed; Clytem- 
nestra vs. Electra—considerable harping on words. 875-92: distichs; 
Electra incredulous at the good news of Chrysothemis. 920-46: stich- 
omythia, mixed with two- and four-line speeches; same speakers, both 
puzzled and incredulous. 1021-51: same speakers; rigid in form, bitter 
and sarcastic in spirit. 1097 ff.: mostly polite formulas, irregular. 
1174-1226: the recognition scene; no opposition except in Electra’s 
failure to understand; ends in excited antilabé. The remainder of the 
play contains some thirty or more lines of irregular short speeches, in 
two places, 1339 ff. and 1450ff., becoming for a few lines formal 
stichomythia. 

The Trachiniae Jebb placed with good reason in the decade 420- 
410 B.c., the latter date being the more likely. It is decidedly irregular 
and more noticeably so because its few rigid stichomythiae occur toward 
the beginning and the end of the play, leaving a great part of the dialogue 
absolutely irregular. We also miss here what we find without exception 
in the other plays, a certain symmetrical setting of speeches of irregular 
length. Yet oddly enough the Trachiniae has only four cases of a speech 
beginning or ending in the middle of a line, though, as we have seen 
just above, this trick of style shows a fairly regular development else- 
where in Sophocles. I shall comment on only the more noteworthy 
passages. 64-78 is mere Euripidean prologue. 385-435 is very irregular, 
with frequent shift of speakers. At 403 the messenger breaks into and 
carries on the rigid stichomythia. Between Lichas and the messenger, 
at least, the tone is very agonistic. At 871 ff., where the nurse announces 
the death of Deianeira, occurs a kommos more than usually interesting 
for its stichomythic detail. The most regular dialogue passages appear 


* Figures for these “linked verses,” to use Flagg’s phrase (Harvard Studies, XII, 
58-68), are rather interesting: Antigone,o; Ajax, 2; Oedipus Rex, 4 (one suspected); 
Electra, 15; Trachiniae, 4 (!); Oedipus Coloneus, 14; Philoctetes, 22. 


STICHOMYTHIA IN THE GREEK DRAMA 15 


in the long episode in which Hyllus and the dying Heracles take part. 
1126-42: Hyllus in argument defends his mother against Heracles. 
1181-92 and 1203-20: Heracles binds his unwilling son to an oath, to 
which Hyllus finally consents, 1241-49. These last four are the only 
passages at all like the stichomythiae of the earlier plays. 

The Philoctetes, by the nature of its plot, contains no long messengers’ 
speeches or long rheses of any sort. It runs its course in dialogue pure 
and simple, with choral interludes. Hence there is room for considerable 
formal stichomythia and with it a great deal of very loosely constructed 
dialogue, part of it still influenced by a desire for symmetry, most of it 
entirely untrammeled. In this play speeches ending or beginning in 
mid-line become almost a regular thing—the verse unit begins to give 
way tothesense unit. This irregularity may be due in part to Philoctetes’ 
raving. From this dialogue of a sort natural and irregular (much of 
which, of course, is valuable for stichomythic details) there stand out 
some five passages of pure stichomythia. In 28-38 Neoptolemus, up the 
slope, describes the situation to Odysseus below (like Pylades and 
Orestes in] ph. Taur. 67-76). 100-122 is a good old-fashioned argumen- 
tative stichomythia which seems, because of its new environment, almost 
artificial. 893-99, followed by an irregular passage, is another familiar 
type. Neoptolemus speaks in veiled language which Philoctetes does 
not understand. 1222-46, also continuing in irregular dialogue, is a 
spirited argument between Odysseus and Neoptolemus containing some 
interesting details. Finally in 1373-92 the stubborn Philoctetes holds 
out against Neoptolemus’ assurances of good faith. Were it not for 
Neoptolemus’ patience and self-control, it would be a quarrel scene. 
1402-7 is notable as Sophocles’ only antilabé in trochaics (cf. p. 21, n. 1), 
and also as his only unmotivated antilabé (cf. p. 12). 

The Oedipus Coloneus, whatever the truth of the traditions attached 
to it, is evidently a work of the poet’s ripest old age. Its dialogue is as 
irregular as that of the Trachiniae, and, as in the earlier play, the cases 
of rigid stichomythia are ‘‘bunched,” this time in the first third of the 
play. The first two, 21-27 and 64-74, with dialogue of irregular form 
between, have the motive of a Euripidean prologue but are far more 
natural. 327-36 is chiefly antilabé of the “joint chant”’ style, by Oedipus 
and Ismene, newly arrived. 385-420 contains occasional distichs but is 
in the main regular. Ismene tells, by the aid of Oedipus’ indignant 
questions, the new situation brought about by the oracle. 465-85 is a 
fairly symmetrical stichomythia of the liturgic type. That is, the 
chorus recite the necessary rites of purification with Oedipus constantly 


16 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


interrupting with questions which anticipate the next step in the explana- 
tion. The purpose is apparently to emphasize the details of the ceremony 
and prevent a tedious recital, just as is the motive in the Platonic 
dialogue structure. 575-605 is stichomythia broken by a few two- and 
three-line speeches. Theseus’ incredulous questions are answered rather 
enigmatically by Oedipus. In 642-56 the last five lines are antilabé in 
which Theseus impatiently interrupts Oedipus, who fears that the young 
king does not realize the gravity of the situation. The last 1,100 lines 
of the play contain no rigid stichomythia and comparatively little 
short-speech dialogue. The scene between Creon and Oedipus is too 
animated to be regular, and the rest runs to longer speeches or to kom- 
motic structure. 

It will be seen that the stichomythia of Sophocles shows the same 
three tendencies as that of Aeschylus, but in different proportions. 
The agonistic element remains about the same, the most striking, yet 
not an invariable, characteristic. In subtlety of thought Sophocles 
made a decided advance, especially in that which goes below the surface 
subtlety of expression. In fact, no other writer, ancient or modern, 
until the time of George Meredith, can compare in this respect with 
Sophocles at his best. But in the matter of symmetry we see the greatest 
change from Aeschylus. The later poet used rigid stichomythia of single 
lines, half-lines, and distichs, and also much dialogue that is symmetri- 
cally irregular, but with this went so much entirely irregular dialogue 
that the effect of the whole is a sacrifice of symmetry of form to natural 
freedom of expression. 

To go in this fashion through all of Euripides’ extant plays would 
be tedious and unprofitable. I have selected seven which best represent 
his methods at different periods of his work. They are: Alcestis, 438; 
Medea, 431; Hippolytus, 428; Ion, 418; Iph. Taur., 414; Orestes, 408; 
Iph. Aul., 405." 

The Alcestis, generally dated about 438, is certainly one of his earliest 
plays. 38-64: spirited though rather subtle argument between Apollo 
and Thanatos. 141-51: servant and chorus, purposely subtle. 371-92: 
parting of Admetus and Alcestis, growing disconnected as she grows 


* These dates, it will be noted, are certain except for the Zon and ph. Taur. 
Bergk placed the latter just after the Electra and just before the Helen (412), but 
Weil dates the Electra 413. It is pretty certain that ph. Taur. is late and also that it 
preceded /Telen, even though we do not believe with Verrall that the latter is a parody 
of the former. Evidence for Jon is lacking except that its trochaic tetrameters mark 
it as late. The date mentioned is given by Jerram. Earlier editors placed it at 
425-417. 


STICHOMYTHIA IN THE GREEK DRAMA 17 


weaker; with her last farewell the verse is broken into three. 476-98: 
Heracles tells the amazed chorus of the labor on which he is at present 
engaged. 509-45: Admetus by sophistic quibbling leads Heracles to 
believe that one of the serving women is dead. Heracles yields and 
consents to become a guest in the house. 708-30: a wonderfully well- 
done quarrel between Pheres and Admetus over their common selfishness 
in allowing Alcestis to die.t 803-25: the servant reveals the truth to 
Heracles. The tone changes from surly anger to a better feeling on 
both sides. In 1072-1119, taken up again in 1126-35 and 1140-44, 
Heracles gradually persuades the at first unyielding Admetus to accept 
the veiled woman whom Heracles has brought back as a prize. The 
tone is agonistic and subtle. At 1126 Admetus recognizes his wife, and 
the following stichomythia is weaker because its motive is merely amaze- 
ment in Admetus, reassurance and explanation from Heracles. Each 
passage mentioned begins with a couple of two- or three-line speeches. 

In the Medea of 431 B.c. we should expect from the nature of the plot 
and the character of the heroine a great deal of vigorous stichomythia. 
In fact, however, most of the bitterness is vented in longer speeches 
and there is comparatively little line-dialogue. In the irregular verses 
between the nurse and the paedagogus at 59 ff. there are some lines of 
stichomythia. At 324-39 Creon is bitter, Medea, in despairing mood, 
calling upon the gods to witness her misfortune, rather than answering 
Creon. Vss.605-9, in the middle of the passage-at-arms between Medea 
and Jason, are good both in the matter of continued construction and 
in the open sarcasm, an unusual thing in Greek drama. 663-708, 
beginning with two distichs, is politely formal.? In the first half, to 688, 
Medea inquires Aegeus’ business at Corinth; from 689 to the end Aegeus 
asks about Medea’s plight. The questions lack eagerness and there is 
considerable padding with stop-gap verses. At 754, 816, 925, there are 

ΣΟΥ ΡΣ Ὑ2. He 2: 

2 ΨΕΓΓΑΙ], ad loc.: “‘. . . . the scene is not made more attractive by the long 
στιχομυθία, which (as Wecklein observes) is proper to the quick exchange of thoughts 
in haste or passion (cf. 324 ff.), but in such a place as this has a very frigid effect, 
which the poet has sought to increase rather than to diminish.” Wecklein, ad Joc.: 
“Die Kunstform der Stichomythie, sehr geeignet bei Streit- und Widerreden, bei 
welchen ein Wort das andere trifft, hat Euripides auch bei langeren Auseinander- 
setzungen angewandt, wo die Verbindung mehrerer Verse oft dem Inhalt angemessener 
sein wiirde. Damit die der Lebhaftigkeit des griechischen Geistes und der griechischen 
Konversation entsprechende Form festgehalten werden kann, werden miissige Fragen 
und Bemerkungen wie 680, 678, 701, 693, dazwischen geschoben oder sind die Ant- 


worten halb und allgemein gehalten um neuen Fragen ankniipfen zu kénnen. Vel. 
Phén. 408 ff.” 


18 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


a few consecutive lines of no importance. 1006-17 is quite irregular 
but good in spirit. Porson, by his clever emendation of κρατεῖς to κάτει 
in rors, furnished a play on words which helps the passage whether it 
be a true restoration or not. At 1306-13 the chorus break the news to 
Jason of his children’s murder. It really serves merely to introduce the 
scene between Medea and Jason, which itself culminates in the stich- 
omythia of 1361-78 and the stichomythic anapests which close the play. 
The bitter recriminations of this passage with the taunting balance of 
phrase, as we find it so often in Shakespeare, make a stichomythia very 
effective in form and spirit. 

In the Hippolytus of 428 B.c. the dialogue is quite regularly stich- 
omythia with the exception of the quarrel scene between Theseus and 
Hippolytus, where short speeches alternate with distichs. In 88-107 
the attendant, with much circumlocution, urges his master to reverence 
the goddess Aphrodite. The servant is subtle, Hippolytus stubborn. 
The use of σεμνός in both good and bad senses may be part of the sub- 
tlety; at any rate it makes the argument fallacious. 270-81: the chorus 
quiz the nurse. 310-52 opens with a line broken in three, and two dis- 
tichs, closes with interruption by a line broken in two, and is equally 
natural throughout. The nurse drags from Phaedra a confession of her 
love for Hippolytus. Note the temporary distraction of Phaedra, vss. 
337-43, and the touch of quibbling on her part all through, but especially 
at the last. 516-21: close of the episode between the two. 601-15: 
the famous scene between outraged Hippolytus and the pleading nurse. 
She changes her plea with each line so that the verses fall into distinct 
pairs. Hippolytus is decidedly gnomic. 797-805: the chorus break 
the news to Theseus; same situation as Medea 1306-13, same subtlety 
as Alcestis 514 ff. 1064-89: distichs of increasing violence ending the 
scene between Theseus and Hippolytus. 1389-1407: Hippolytus and 
Artemis together commiserate his fate, paving the way for the farewell 
words of father and son, 1408-15 and 1446-58, which are less dialogue 
than alternating laments. 

Iphigeneia in Tauris (ca. 414-13 B.C.) is also very regular in its 
dialogue, with the exception of the recognition scene so artistically 
brought about by Iphigeneia’s letter. In 67-76 Orestes is behind or 
below Pylades and questions him about the outlook like Odysseus in 
Philoc. 26 ff. 246-55: a shepherd reports to Iphigeneia. Her questions 
follow each other connectedly; his answers are categorical. 492-569: 
Iphigeneia plies Orestes with questions about her family and the Greeks 
in general. Each is ignorant of the other’s identity. He is stubborn 


STICHOMYTHIA IN THE GREEK DRAMA 19 


and evasive until in 507 she shows that she is not commanding but 
asking a favor. The passage, though long, is made spirited throughout 
by her eager interest in the replies." 617-27: Orestes asks Iphigeneia 
details as to the death awaiting him. 734-54: Iphigeneia with the 
aid of Orestes “lines out” the oath (ἐξάρχει ὅρκον) for Pylades. 805- 
21: following the letter scene, Orestes proves his identity, overcoming 
Iphigeneia’s skepticism.? 915-38: Iphigeneia questions Orestes in 
greater detail, and from her new viewpoint, about the family. 1020-51: 
Iphigeneia, in response to Orestes’ questions, formulates a plan to 
escape from the country. The long scene, 1157-1221, between Thoas 
and Iphigeneia is very like that between Helen and Theoclymenus 
(1193 ff.) in the Helen of a year or so later. She deceives Thoas as to 
the need for purification, and so secures his help in carrying out her 
plan of escape. For the purposes of the stichomythia he serves merely 
as interlocutor,3 to draw out the details of the plot. In the trochaic 
antilabé that runs from 1203 to 1221,4 he has nothing but stop-gap 
verses, while she gives directions in verses that are grammatically 
continuous. Vss. 1317-22 are unimportant. 

In the Jon (ca. 418 B.c.) and the Orestes (408 B.c.) Euripides is at his 
worst from our modern viewpoint, though the second hypothesis calls 
the Orestes τῶν ἐπὶ σκηνῆς εὐδοκιμούντων. The former contains the longest 
stichomythiae we have, one of 114 lines, one of 95 lines, and one in 
antilabé of 33 lines. That is too much of even the best of dialogue, and 
this lacks both cleverness and subject-matter.s 255-368 begins with 
distichs. Ion and Creusa learn each the other’s woeful tale. 255-307: 
Creusa’s family history; 308-29: Ion’s history; 330-58: Creusa’s 
early amour with Apollo; 359-68: general observations, with a touch 
of argument. The whole is like an exaggeration of Medea 663-708. 

τ Stichomythic spirit would favor the following arrangement: vss. 510, 515, στό, 


513, 514, 511, 512,517. So ἐξ “Apyous would be “picked up” from ἐκ τῶν Μυκηνῶν, 
φυγάς from δυσπραξίας. 

1 Flagg on Iph. Taur. 811.: “The distich marks the shift from one person to the 
other as questioner.” 

3 Flagg on Iph. Taur. 1040: “Interposed in a critical tone, like vs. 1038. Dramat- 
ically such interruptions indicate impatience, wonder, or some similar feeling; ar- 
tistically, the stichomythia in this way retards the mental movement and reflects 
the progress of ideas in the mind of the spectator, instead of hurrying his wits—an 
art well understood in the ‘minstrel business’ of the present day.” 

RET P28, τὰς τὸς 

SIt is on this passage Vaughan generalizes—wrongly. See below, p. 23, n. 2. 
Yet Patin (II, 53-57) exclaims at this passage, “‘Que d’art et de naturel dans ce 
dialogue!” 


20 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


517-62 (530 to end, antilabé): trochaics, teeming with interruptions 
and continued constructions. Until 556 Ion catechizes Xuthus to prove 
the oracle improbable or untrue; 556 to the end is a sort of double 
soliloquy on the new situation. 934-1028: Creusa and the old man; 
934-70: Creusa retells her story; 971-1028: the two plot revenge. 
There is much padding with stop-gap verses and useless repetition. 
1250-60: trochaics, as irregular as anything in Sophocles. 1282-1311: 
Creusa and Ion again, this time with notable thought-ellipses. Nauck 
changed the order of verses rightly by application of the principle of 
“catchwords”’; cf. p. 19, n. 1 and p. 35. 1324-56: a somewhat padded 
stichomythia between Ion and priestess, who acts as peacemaker, and 
gives him his long-concealed swaddling clothes. 1395-1432 (irregular 
to 1406): recognition scene between Ion and Creusa; very elliptical 
and correspondingly lifelike. At the close of the play three lines of 
antilabé, 1616-18, are spread symmetrically among three speakers. 
The Orestes contains even more stichomythia than the Jon (381 
verses to 357), but no single passage of such length. 88-110: Helen 
urges Electra to take offerings to Clytemnestra’s tomb, but is persuaded 
to send Hermione; unimportant in motive and details. 217-67: distichs, 
Euripidean pathos become a mannerism. Electra, siting by his bedside, 
comforts the half-crazed Orestes. At 255 he begins to rave. 385-448: 
Orestes reveals his situation in response to the eager questions of Mene- 
laus; lively and natural in spite of its length. 482-91: Menelaus is 
rebuked by Tyndarus for associating with Orestes; argumentative and 
epigrammatic. 733-73: trochaics; Orestes and Pylades tell their 
respective plights, the break coming at 763. 774-98: they consider 
plans for safety in crisp antilabé. 1022-59: distichs (broken by five 
lines, 1047-51) of joint lament by Orestes and Electra. 1069-75: 
Pylades would die with Orestes. 1100-31: they plot to kill Helen. 
1177-90: beginning with two distichs, Electra speaking to both but 
answered by Orestes only, suggests taking Hermione as hostage. 1231- 
40: two distichs, followed by Orestes a half-line, Electra a half-line, 
Pylades a full line, three times over, then a kommos. The passage is a 
miniature of Aesch. Choeph. 479-508.. 1326-36: Electra deceives 
Hermione by half-truths. 1506-26: trochaics, the last two lines broken 
into five. It is by-play between Orestes and the Phrygian slave like 
Aristophanes’ or Shakespeare’s clown scenes. Partly owing to its comic 
tone, it is full of good details of subtlety and ellipsis. 1575-1617: 
Orestes and Menelaus in bitter wrangle, not natural to our modern way 


* Cf. Wilamowitz, Hermes, XVIII, 223; Gross, p. 54, ἢ. 51. 


STICHOMYTHIA IN THE GREEK DRAMA 21 


of thinking, but very lively. From 1600 to the end it is antilabé in 
iambics, an unusual thing in Euripides.t 

In the [phigeneia in Aulis (ca. 407 or 405 B.C.) Euripides comes 
back, strangely enough, from the stilted style of the Jon and the Orestes. 
It seems as if he had written those down to an audience clamoring for 
rhetorical effect, and now, in his last play, permits his real genius and 
good taste to hold sway. 303-13: actual struggle between Menelaus 
and the old servant. At 317 Agamemnon takes up the quarrel, and 
trochaics to 334 mark the intensity of feeling. 404-12: stichomythic 
“capping”’ of the longer speeches in the “agon”’ between the two.? 
513-27: same speakers, no longer opposed. The passage is very ellip- 
tical; cf. p. 29. 640-77: Agamemnon’s words are partly disconnected, 
partly soliloquies or asides, but always suggested by and suggesting 
Iphigeneia’s. Sophoclean irony is prominent throughout. 697-738: up 
to 709 like Aesch. Supp. 295 ff. 710-24: Clytemnestra asks details of 
the approaching marriage, with evasive answers by Agamemnon; 725- 
38: he tries to persuade her to return home, and the stichomythia 
breaks with her indignant interruption at 739. 819-54: distichs in 
which Achilles learns of the pretended marriage. At 855 the old servant 
enters to reveal the truth to Clytemnestra, and animated trochaics 
follow to goo, all three taking part. 1oo8-15: Achilles encourages 
Clytemnestra to plead again with Agamemnon. The resulting scene, 
1008 ff., is very irregular, even in the stichomythic part, 1129-40, because 
of its emotional intensity. 1345-68 (introduced by irregular trochaics 
of Clytemnestra and Iphigeneia, 1338-44) is trochaic antilabé with the 
customary continuation of construction from line to line by the same 
speaker, but with perhaps less padding than usual. 1434-67: farewell 
of Iphigeneia and Clytemnestra; impulsive and irregular toward the 
end, finishing with antilabé of the kommotic type. 

In Euripides, then, we find probably less true subtlety than in 
Sophocles, but more subtlety of language and form, a greater proportion 
of epigram and gnomic phrase and play on words. Again, his sticho- 
mythia is more controversial than the older poet’s in that it runs far 

τ Οἱ the eight clearly marked cases of antilabé in Sophocles, only one, Philoc. 
1402 ff., is in trochaics. In Euripides’ earlier plays, aside from scattered instances of 
iambic lines divided between speakers, there is no antilabé. The first real occurrence 
is in Herc. Fur. 1418 ff. (ca. 421 B.c.), where the motive is just that of the Philoctetes 
passage (which is later by a decade). The first long passage is also in trochaics, 
Iph. Taur. 1203 ff. (ca. 414 B.c.). Tambic antilabé of more than three lines is found 
only here, in Cyclops 669 fi., and in Phoen. 980-85, 1273-78. 

Hers Dek 2s 


22 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


more to rhetorical debates, arguments, and quarrels.‘ The difference lies, 
perhaps, more in quantity than in quality, but the effect is as marked 
as if the ‘‘agons” of Euripides were individually more keenly contro- 
versial and more spirited than those of Sophocles. In the matter of 
symmetry he goes back almost to the ideals of Aeschylus; at least, we 
may say that his stichomythiae and his dialogues in general are rigid 
and regular by contrast with those of Sophocles. And certainly there 
is more artificiality, more of the mannerism, in Euripides than in either 
of the other poets. 


1 Flagg, Intro. to Iph. Taur., p. 40: “The poet’s fondness for dialectics and set 
debate, ‘words wrestling down words’ (ph. Aul. 1013), found one of its outlets in 
this form of dialogue. Sharpness of repartee and an exquisite subtlety are character- 
istic of the stichomythia in all three of the tragic masters. Euripides extended its 
compass as the vehicle of matter-of-fact conversations intended chiefly to elicit 
information or to interchange counsel.” 


CHAPTER II 
STICHOMYTHIA IN SENECA 


The most surprising thing in Seneca’s stichomythia, by contrast 
with the Greek, is its infrequence, at least in a rigid form. This goes 
hand in hand with his increased use of long speeches in both monologue 
and dialogue. On the other hand, the frequence of antilabé and the 
uniformly high tension in the stichomythic passages give the hasty 
reader the impression that they form a large part of the whole. The 
irregularity of form in the short-speech dialogue passages, as in the later 
plays of Sophocles, makes it impossible to define formally the limits 
of the stichomythia and give definite statistics for comparison. It is 
worthy of note, however, that the Octavia, which is probably not Seneca’s, 
has more stichomythia in proportion to its length than the plays which 
are certainly his, and that the form of these passages is more rigidly 
symmetrical. In other words, the Octavia is in this respect a closer 
imitation of a Euripidean play, though entirely Senecan in its epigram- 
matic style. 

By the phrase ‘“‘high tension” used above I mean that the speakers 
are keyed up to a pitch where alert responses, keen retorts, are the 
normal, not the exceptional, thing. The conversations approach in sub- 
tlety and brilliance those of Meredith’s characters. This over-brilliance 
manifests itself especially in a tendency to epigram? and to allusiveness.3 
The same tendency, of course, appears in Euripides and even in Sopho- 
cles, but not to such a degree. Contrast, for instance, Seneca’s A gam. 
144-63, with its succession of epigrams, with the most gnomic of stich- 
omythic passages in Aeschylus’ A gam., vss. 931-43, between Agamemnon 


Cf. A. W. Ward—anything but a hasty reader!—History of English Dramatic 
Literature, 1, 192: ‘‘His [Seneca’s] dialogue bristles with antithesis, to which effect 
is added by the device of stichomythia and even by that of breaking up a single line 
into thrust and parry.” 

2 Vaughan, Types of Tragic Drama, p. 97: “In epigram and sharp sentences, in 
the art of logic chopping and hair splitting, Seneca more than follows the example of 
Euripides. He has not, indeed, those interminable screeds of repartee—of “thrusting 
and parrying in bright monostich” extending sometimes to more than a hundred 
lines—in which Euripides exulted. And for this relief we must be thankful.” 


3 Cf., e.g., Troades 320 ff.; Phaedra 240 ff. 
23 


24 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


and Clytemnestra. Or again, compare Oedipus 693-706 with the corre- 
sponding passage in the Oedipus Rex of Sophocles, 622 ff., and observe 
the lack of anything in the Greek Trachiniae to match with vss. 886-902 
of the Hercules Oetaeus. Or finally, read Seneca’s Herc. Fur. 448-58 
and Troades 322-48, both vigorous quarrel scenes but both in an allusive, 
subtly sarcastic style, and find if possible anything in Euripides to 
correspond. Such quarrel scenes as we find in ph. Aul. 302 ff. or 404 ff. 
or Orestes 1576 ff. approach these in spirit but not in style of expression. 
This tendency to epigram and subtle allusion made it inevitable that 
Seneca’s stichomythia should be more sophistic than even that of 
Euripides. Quibbles are often introduced by the Greek writers into a 
passage of real value to the play; Seneca makes a whole passage out of 
sophistic quibbles while his dramatic situation waits.‘ On the other 
hand, Seneca has none of the artificial stop-gap verses of Euripides. 
Such crisp repartee involves much asyndeton. But so completely 
are particles and connectives lacking in Seneca’s stichomythia that the 
result is a consistently unconnected series of verses which, for lack of 
contrast, do not impress us as asyndetic. While there is much thought- 
ellipsis, grammatical ellipsis is less frequent than in the Greek, where 
it is at the bottom of most asyndeton and is accountable for many 
cases of continued construction between speeches. Of this latter phe- 
nomenon, so common in Greek, there is little in Seneca. The cases 
which do occur are usually of the fixed type found, e.g., Herc. Oet. 430: 
Nut.: Quis iste furor est? Dei.: Quem meus coniunx docet. 


There are also some cases of mere apposition or of categorical answer 
with case changed to suit the need, a few in interruption with changed 
thought (e.g., Ty. 1101), a couple with complementary infinitives, none 
at all with a participle, the device most frequently used by the Greeks. 
All this, again, is due to the artificiality of Latin stichomythia, which 
rejected all that was natural but not striking. Most of the few cases of 
continued construction in Seneca are, like the one cited, more rhetorical 
than natural. 

On the other hand, “catchwords”’ in Greek stichomythia are both 
natural and striking. Hence we find Seneca multiplying their use until 
they become the most noticeable thing in the dialogue passages. Catch- 
words are, in fact, the most important device in Senecan stichomythia, 


> 


*Cf. Herc. Fur. 448-58; Herc. Oet. 886-902; Agam. 144-61; Oecd. 509-30, 
693-706; Thyestes 204-20. Each passage adds to the character drawing but not to 
development of the characters or advancement of the action. Cf., for the need of 
advancing action through dialogue, Wecklein, Stud. su Eurip., pp. 343 ff. 


STICHOMYTHIA IN SENECA 25 


as particles subtly used and continued construction are for Greek, and 
continuation of metaphors for modern stichomythic conversation in 
fiction or drama. Moreover, most of his catchwords take on a new or 
added meaning, more or less subtle, with the new speaker, a device 
which in Greek is rather the exception than the rule. Where a word is 
caught up by a synonym or antonym, the two words or phrases are 
almost always formally balanced.t There are a great many cases of two 
or more catchwords in a line, whereas in Greek such a use is so rare as to 
be notable. 

In some details Greek uses find exact equivalents in Seneca, as the 
καί of surprise or doubt? (cf., inter al., Tro. 429; Medea 525; Phaedra 
1121), the “demonstrative of the second person” with a catchword3 
(Herc. Oet. 1357; Herc. Fur. 431), or the unconcluded condition with εἰ 
to mean “What, if . . . .”’4 (Tro. 493). Seneca agrees with Euripides 
also (and differs from modern custom) in his sparing use of interruption 
(Thy. 1101; Herc. Oet. 801), of the Yankee trick of question for question 
(Tro. 331; Oed. 696; Agam. 956, 962; Oet. 862), of open sarcasm (Tro. 
330; 341; Agam. 955; Medea 201), and of continuation of metaphor 
(Oed. 517). 

To sum up: though Seneca achieved a surface brilliance, an epi- 
grammatic subtlety, he went no deeper, and fell behind the Greeks in 
representing the real progress of two alert minds subtly working together. 
And although his stichomythic passages are more uniformly agonistic 
in spirit, in natural vigor they are not beyond and perhaps not equal to 
the Greek. 


τ Virtual catchwords occur about as often as in Greek. Evidently they were not 
sufficiently striking to serve Seneca’s purpose largely. 


2Cf. p. 20. 3 Cf. p. 38. 4 Cf. p. 30. 


CHAPTER III 
USE OF PARTICLES AND SPECIAL DEVICES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


The comment frequently made that the Greek language is very rich 
in particles should really run: Greek particles are very rich in meaning. 
Latin, French, and German have nearly as many, but not so subtly 
differentiated. English is practically without them, but is full of phrases, 
more or less awkward in bulk, to take their place. The Greek particle 
is a gem with many facets, for whose display there is no better setting 
than stichomythia.t The Greek genius, always keen for subtle dis- 
tinctions of language, found the condensed speech of line-dialogue an 
ideal place to carry out the tendency even to exaggeration. In the 
following pages I shall list the various particles employed and note the 
extent of their use without going into tabulations. 

The use of co-ordinate conjunctions and particles is so common that 
one often overlooks their value in continuing the thought smoothly. 
τέ is infrequently used thus in stichomythia,? καί very largely, and 
that too wholly aside from its use in questions, which will be touched 
on later. 5€is even more frequent and is especially useful in continuing 
the thought of one speaker from line to line over the responses of the 
other in a series of “‘items,” as in Eur. Bacchae 465 ff.; Herc. Fur. 
548 fi.8 Then come, approximately in order of frequency, καί γέ, καὶ 
μήν γέ, καὶ μήν, ἀλλά, and μήν. All these except ἀλλά, of course, are not 
pure connectives but have an intensive force as well, which often becomes 
the primary factor in the meaning. ἀλλά develops by the side of its 
usual meaning some interesting uses which are not noticed specifically 
in Stephanus, Liddell and Scott, or the commentators ad locos, with 
the possible exception of Jebb. In many places it must be translated by 


τ Wilamowitz, Herakles, II?, 126: ‘‘Kein Teil des attischen Dramas ist schwerer 
zu verstehen als die Stichomythie, . . . . ein besonders ausgebildetes Sprachgefiihl 
erfordert wird, um die Farbung des Ausdrucks zu empfinden, die oft durch vieldeutige 
Partikeln, oft nur durch die Wortstellung bewirkt ist. Der Erklirer muss viele Worte 
machen; doch kann die Paraphrase oft aushelfen.” 


2 The reason is obvious. τέ implies an originally planned co-ordination, while 
stichomythia, with its rapid change of speakers, involves extempore co-ordination. 
3 Also used in effecting an asyndetic transition, as Bacch. 481 et passim. Cf. Jebb 
on Soph. Oed. Tyr. 310. 
26 


USE OF PARTICLES AND SPECIAL DEVICES 27 


our idiomatic ‘Well! . . . .” which may be either (a) defiant or (6) 
yielding a point." This type includes the use with the imperative cited 
by the lexicons as Homeric, but does not stop with that. To cite only 
a few of the many instances, cf. for (a) Aesch. Septem 1053; Soph. 
Antig. 48; Elec. 387;2 Eur. Alc. 716; Hec. 401; Iph. Aul. 312; for 
(ὁ) Agam. 944; Choeph. 781; Soph. Elec. 944; Trach. 1211; Eur. 
Bacch. 818; Elec. 577. At other times it is exactly rendered by an 
exclamation of surprise or dismay, ‘‘What!....” Cf. Aesch. 
Septem 1046 ff.3 (in six lines here the three uses); Choeph. 220; Soph. 
Elec. 879; Eur. Alc. 58; [ph. Taur. 1170; Supp. 135; Herc. Fur. 1128. 
In this meaning it always introduces a question, often with the assistance 
of 7 or 7 καί. This composite use is the only one mentioned in the 
lexicons. 

The various meanings of γέ are fully recognized by the lexicons 
and in special treatises, notably Neil’s appendix to his edition of the 
Knights and the excellent study of yé in Sophocles by Goligher in Herma- 
thena, XXXIV, 216 ff. It is enough here to say that all these subtly 
varying meanings are found in stichomythia, but especially frequent is 
the somewhat elliptical use of the particle to pick up a whole phrase 
or sentence in assent which is at once qualified by a further clause:5 
ἐν ΘΟ seins). eee WES anys ren aie a Wes ΠΡ πος ” This and 
the frequent γάρ to mean “Yes, for... . ,”° are the most obvious 
instances of ellipsis or of continuation of construction from speaker to 
speaker.? γάρ, by the way, may also mean “No, for.... ,’% as is 


τ Cf. Jebb on Soph. Trach. 1170, ‘‘prefacing assent.”’ 

2 Shows connection with ἀλλά at beginning of prayers. 

3 Aesch. Septem 1046: 
Herald: ἀλλ᾽ ὃν πόλις στυγεῖ, σὺ τιμήσεις τάφῳ; 
Antig.: ἤδη τὰ τοῦδ᾽ οὐ δίχα τετίμηται θεοῖς. 
Herald: οὗ, πρίν γε χώραν τήνδε κινδύνῳ βαλεῖν. 
Antig.: παθὼν κακῶς κακοῖσιν ἀντημείβετο. 
Herald: ἀλλ’ εἰς ἅπαντας ἀνθ᾽ ἑνὸς τόδ᾽ ἔργον ἢν. 
Antig.: ἔρις περαίνει μῦθον ὑστάτη θεῶν. 

ἐγὼ δὲ θάψω τόνδε - μὴ μακρηγόρει. 

Herald: ἀλλ᾽ αὐτόβουλος ἴσθ᾽, ἀπεννέπω δ᾽ ἐγώ. 


4 Cf. Jebb on Philoc. 414; Elec. 870. 
5 Idem, Trach. 335. 6 Idem, Oed. Tyr. 1117. 


7 Gross (p. 83) gives occurrences in Aeschylus. His comment on the unusual fre- 
quence of this idiom in half-verses would be better generalized by saying that it is 
especially frequent in passages of rapid motion. 


8 Jebb on Oed. Tyr. 1520. 


28 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


the case some twenty or more times in the three great dramatists. 
Usually this is caused by a negatively put question, so that the γάρ is 
really an answer to the thought. For an instance of this and of the true 
negative yap cf. Hippol. 279, 281.1 The use of γάρ in questions, especially 
in the combinations τί γάρ and 7 γάρ, is not peculiar to stichomythia 
but occurs there frequently. Its uses may be briefly classified as three: 
(1) to show that the question is motivated or suggested by the previous 
speech; (2) to express surprise;? (3) to make a new point or introduce 
a question on a new topic.3 dpa and οὖν do not occur often in stich- 
omythic passages, though they seem especially fitted for use there. 
When the latter does occur it is usually quite literal or at worst merely 
loose in its reference. 

It may be well to say here that in spite of the subtlety of connections 
and transitions, and the consequent frequence of particles, asyndeton 
is common in stichomythia, in fact is as much the rule as the exception— 
a statement which I make after careful study of the passages and in face 
of my own preconceived opinion. All we can say is that there is more 
asyndeton where the movement of a passage is rapid and feeling is tense 
than when it is smooth and unexcited. Any generalization beyond that 
point seems impossible. This frequence of asyndeton is really nothing 
surprising. Asyndeton is the lack of formal and definite connectives 
between phrases or sentences logically connected. This lack is supplied, 
in stichomythia as elsewhere, by change in the order of words, by con- 
tinuation of the construction, formal or elliptical, by picking up of word 
or phrase from the preceding sentence, or by our own instinctive recogni- 
tion of the connection. Asyndeton, then, between speakers is a mark 
of quick understanding, of subtle and elliptical response, which in turn 
are inherent characteristics of stichomythia. Particles are largely used 
because they save phrases, asyndeton because it saves both phrases 
and particles. Only when the unconnected sentence startles us with its 
abruptness is the lack of connection worth noting. It happens sometimes, 


* Hippol. 278-81: 
Chorus: θαυμαστὸν εἶπας, εἰ τάδ᾽ ἐξαρκεῖ πόσει. 
Nurse: κρύπτει γὰρ ἥδε πῆμα κοὔ φησιν νοσεῖν [=No, not strange, for... .]. 
Chorus: ὃ δ᾽ εἰς πρόσωπον οὐ τεκμαίρεται βλέπων. 
Nurse: ἔκδημος ὧν γὰρ τῆσδε τυγχάνει χθονός. 


2 Cf. Jebb on Philoc. 651; Ajax 1130; Elec. 393; Earle on Medea 670. 


3On γάρ in general or in detail see Misener, The Meaning of γάρ, University of 
Chicago dissertation, 1903. For all three uses mentioned above and the normal γάρ 
as well, see Antig. 730 ff., where it occurs nine times in sixteen lines. 


USE OF PARTICLES AND SPECIAL DEVICES 20 


when the stichomythic verses are markedly in groups of two or four, that 
the first verse of each group is abrupt in its transition, as in Jph. Aul. 
513 ff., where we have an effect of actual jerkiness. Herc. Fur. 1418 is 
another case of rather startling transition, while in A gam. 1208 and Eur. 
Elec. 904 we find truly abrupt asyndeton without transition. In gnomic 
or epigrammatic passages asyndeton is regular and more or less startling. 
The examples cited above are not unique but are typical of a small class. 
The extent of that class depends largely on our individual opinion as to 
what constitutes abruptness. 

To return to our particles, explicit negatives or affirmatives give the 
same abrupt effect as asyndeton (some, indeed, might classify them as 
such), by contrast with the use of yé or yap or continued construction. 
ov δῆτα, ov, and μάλιστα are the most frequently used, but we find also 
ουδαμῶς, ἥκιστα, οὕπω, οὐκ ἔστι (three times in the Alcestis), vat, ὧδ᾽ ἔχει, 
πῶς δ᾽ οὔ, σάφ᾽ ἴσθι, and the like. Most often, however, a word is 
repeated in categorical affirmation or with οὐ in denial. All of these 
cases of explicit answer, however, are few compared to the occur- 
rences of γέ and γάρ. 

I have spoken of the use of ἀλλά in questions of surprise or dismay, 
especially in combination with 7 and 7 καί, In the same way 7 καί: 
or kat? alone is used regularly to introduce eager questions. In Plato’s 
dialogues they also introduce questions, but they are the carefully 
anticipated questions of a logical series. These are questions leaping 
spontaneously from the lips as the significance of the other speaker’s 
words reaches the mind. Sometimes they merely serve to repeat the 
amazing fact just stated, sometimes they raise a fresh point arising 
from the other. Cf. Herc. Fur. 614 and 1138 for the two sorts. It isa 
question whether the true Platonic uneager 7 καί is to be found in 
stichomythia.3 Another use of καί, more or less closely related to this, 
is to introduce an incredulous question, very often with πῶς. The 
effect is very much like the Irish “And how .... ,᾽ in which the 


τ Cf. Jebb on Soph. Oed. Tyr. 757. 
2 Idem, Oed. Col. 263; Elec. 236. 


3In Hippol. 97, otherwise an excellent example, the καί goes with the noun; so in 
Plato Laches 184A. Is this true ina weaker degree of all the Platonic cases ? 


4 Paley on Helen 583 and 1212. The use of δέ to connect a series of questions by 
one speaker seems to give somewhat the same effect of doubt or skepticism. Does 
this mean that the connective force of the two particles brings about the effect of 
skepticism ? 


30 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


“and” is not a real connective and the “how” may mean “how” or 
“why” or ‘“‘are you really.” Cf. Eur. Elec. 224-25: 


Ores.: There is no one whom I might more justly touch than you. 
Elec.: And how are you lurking armed about my house ? 


Sometimes the phrase is complete in itself. Cf. Agam. 549, 1310. 
Skeptical or incredulous questions are also often introduced by πῶς οὖν 
and πῶς δῆτα. All these phrases with πῶς may of course be used 
literally to ask for information without any expression of incredulity. 

πῶς δῆτα, again, should be included in a group with τί δῆτα, ποῦ δῆτα, 
τί δή, κτλ, all introducing questions of surprise, logical doubt, impatience, 
or anger. I have been unable to observe any consistent difference 
between the phrases with δή and those with δῆτα as regard sharpness. 
From its original meaning δῆτα is regularly used to represent logical in- 
ference, where δή is not employed at all, but it is also fully as frequent as 
δή in questions of impatience or anger. For the various particles express- 
ing eagerness, surprise, irritation, doubt, a very convenient illustration 
may be found in Ajax 38-50. Odysseus eagerly questions Athena, 
using ἦ καί in vss. 38, 44, 48, καί in vss. 40, 50, τί δῆτα in vs. 42. Cf. 
Aesch. Choeph. 526-32; Eur. Herc. Fur. 538-61. Often grammatical 
ellipsis comes very close to thought-ellipsis, especially in answers where 
the direct word or phrase is omitted but is qualified by the spoken words. 
A few illustrations will make this clear. Aes. Prom. 982 f.: 


Hermes: καὶ μὴν σύ γ᾽ οὕπω σωφρονεῖν ἐπίστασαι. 
Prom.: σὲ γὰρ προσηύδων οὐκ ἂν ὄνθ᾽ ὑπηρέτην. 
[‘‘For otherwise. .... fd 
Supp. sto f.: 
King: οὔτοι πτερωτῶν ἁρπαγαῖς σ᾽ ἐκδώσομεν. 
Chorus: ἀλλ᾽ εἰ δρακόντων δυσφρόνων ἐχθίοσιν. 
(‘But what will happen if you be bidden to yield us up. .. . .᾽ 
a regular idiom, which should be punctuated with a dash or question 
mark. Cf. Eur. Herac. 713 f.: 
Tol.: παιδὸς μελήσει παισὶ τοῖς λελειμμένοις. 
Alc.: ἢν δ᾽ οὖν, ὃ μὴ γένοιτο, χρήσωνται τύχῃ; 
Aesch. Agam. 1211 f. (cf. also Soph. Oed. Tyr. τοῖς f.): 
Chorus: πῶς δῆτ᾽ ἄνατος ἦσθα Λοξίου κότῳ; 
(α55.: ἔπειθον οὐδέν᾽ οὐδὲν, ὡς τάδ᾽ ἤμπλακον. 


(‘I was not unscathed for..... 7 


USE OF PARTICLES AND SPECIAL DEVICES 31 


In Soph Oed. Tyr. 994 the first part of a double question is answered, 
neglecting the second part; in Oed. Tyr. 1040 the reverse is true. A 
common ellipsis is that in Eur. Herac. 271 f.: 
Copreus: μὴ πρὸς θεῶν κήρυκα τολμήσῃς θενεῖν. 
Demophon: εἰ μή γ᾽ ὃ κῆρυξ σωφρονεῖν μαθήσεται. 
(“I will unless... .. 44] 
Phoen. 1346 f.: 
Creon: οἴμοι κακῶν δύστηνος - ὦ τάλας ἐγώ. 
Mess.: εἰ καὶ τὰ πρὸς τούτοισί γ᾽ εἰδείης κακά. 
[“You would be indeed 1{..... a] 

And another device equally frequent is repetition of the construction in 
the preceding verse without the controlling word. Cf. Eur. Herac. 682 f.: 
Servant: ἥκιστα πρὸς σοῦ μῶρον ἦν εἰπεῖν ἔπος. 

Tolaus: καὶ μὴ μετασχεῖν γ᾽ ἀλκίμου μάχης φίλοις. 
And, finally, very common is the use οὗ γάρ to mark ellipsis of a whole 
phrase. Cf. Aesch. Eumen. τος f.: 


Chorus: νεκροῖσί νυν πέπεισθι μητέρα κτανών. 


X 


Side by side and often combined with the continuation of thought 
from speaker to speaker is the continuation of construction, usually in 
answers, sometimes in questions, sometimes in interruptions. Only in 
this last case do we find any notable attempts at subtlety. In general 
the matter is purely grammatical. In Aeschylus up to the Agamemnon 
trilogy more than a third of the cases are categorical answers and only 
a few involve even a simple ellipsis. But from this point on ellipsis 
played a large part and categorical answers are not so prominent. 
The most frequent ways of continuing the construction are (1) by 
participle,t (2) by subordinate clause or infinitive, (3) by a noun in 
case relation. In questions the participle is most used, in categorical 
answers the case construction. The infinitives of class (2) may be 
indirect discourse, complementary, or epexegetical. Adjectives and 
adverbs, either single words or prepositional phrases, are not often 
found. Cases of pure apposition (which might be included in the class 
of nouns in case relation) are fairly frequent. Occasionally in inter- 
ruptions a verb is interposed by the second speaker in the middle of the 


τ Cf. Jebb on Soph. Ajax to51. 


32 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


first speaker’s sentence, as in Eur. Supp. 935. The most interesting 
cases of continued construction in interruption are in antilabé, where 
the interrupting speaker purposely warps the meaning.'_ Cf. Cyclops, 683: 
Chorus: ἔχεις; 
Cyclops: κακόν ye πρὸς Kako, 


where Shelley mistranslated the accusative as one of exclamation. So 
Ajax 875: 

ἔχεις οὖν---(ΟΥὙ as question) 

πόνου γε πλῆθος κὀυδὲν εἰς ὄψιν πεσόν. 
Eur. Supp. 818: 
dr.: ἔχεις, Exers— 

Chorus: πημάτων γ᾽ ἅλις βάρος. 
Ores. 1606: 

Mene.: ὅστις δὲ τιμᾷ μητέρ᾽; 

[“. . . . will ke speak to you?”’] 

Ores.: (purposely misunderstanding): εὐδαίμων ἔφυ. 
Helen 1633: 

Theoc.: 4 με προύδωκεν--- 

Chorus: καλήν ye προδοσίαν, δίκαια δρᾶν. 


In the case of interruptions or of mere stop-gap verses (the Fiillverse 
of Gross), the sentence is often continued by the original speaker. 
Unless, however, the construction is altered by the intervening verse, 
this is perfectly natural and need be considered only under the head of 
stop-gap verses.* But continuation from one speaker to another marks 


t Cf. Shakespeare’s use, p. 86. 


? Both uses are well illustrated by Phoen. 603 ff.; Helen 1630-39. The latter 
passage, short as it is, includes practically all the devices of continued construction. 
Theoclymenus wishes to punish his priestess-sister for aiding Helen to escape; the 
chorus stoutly oppose him: 

Theo.—4\ra δεσποτῶν κρατήσεις δοῦλος ὥν; Cho.—ppovd yap ed. 
(Q\\d=“What!....”; yap=“VYesfor..... ny 
Theo.—ovx ἔμοιγε εἰ μή μ᾽ ἐάσει---- Cho.—ov μὲν οὖν σ᾽ ἐάσομεν. 
(ἔμοιγε with εὖ φρονῶ; interruption; catchword.) 
Theo.—ovyyovov κτανεῖν κακίστην--- Cho.—evoceBeordarny μὲν οὖν. 
(Const. cont. by original speaker; catchword antonym.) 
Theo.—% με προύδωκεν--- Cho.—xanhv ye προδοσίαν, δίκαια δρᾶν. 
(Const. cont. by original speaker; const. cont. by interruption.) 
Theo.—rapua déxrp’ ἄλλῳ διδοῦσα, Cho.—rois ye κυριωτέροις. 
(Const. cont. by original speaker; const. cont. with correction.) 


(Note continued on p. 33] 


a Ὁ... 5. ἌΑὐδὰ «Ὁ. συ" νῶν τς αν. ..“ποὸὺρσσι,, των. .ν“.,. . “ὦ -" 


USE OF PARTICLES AND SPECIAL DEVICES 33 


in an obvious way the close connection in thought between the two, 
the keenness with which each follows the other’s argument or statement. 
It is as if each appropriated the other’s words, in the moment of their 
utterance, to his own train of thought. But there is an entire lack of 
subtlety, an utter obviousness, in such a usage; no hidden meaning 
lurks, as a rule, behind the words or between the lines. And so we are 
not surprised to find it confined to two or three consecutive lines or to 
successive two-line groups of question and answer. It is noteworthy, 
however, that the Greek dramatists have more of this continuation of 
construction than any later writers from Seneca down to our own times.’ 

Byen more characteristic of stichornythia is angry or mocking balance 
of form. This has nothing to do with antiphonal appeals like those in 
Eur. Elec. 671 ff., and is only incidentally connected with categorical 
repetition in answers, as in Helen 1416 f.: 

Helen: αὖθις κέλευσον, ἵνα σαφῶς μάθωσί σου. 


Theo.: αὖθις κελεύω καὶ τρίτον γ᾽, εἴ σοι φίλον. 


Cases of catchwords with true taunting balance of form are given on 
p. 39. At times the tone of irritation occurs even in balanced exclama- 
tions or appeals. Cf. Aesch. Septem 255 ie 
Chorus: ὦ παγκρατὲς Ζεῦ, τρέψον εἰς ἐχθροὺς βέλος... 
Eteocles: ὦ Ζεῦ, γυναικῶν οἷον ὥπασας γένος. 


Aesch. Eumen. 744-47: 
Orestes: ὦ Bot’ ΛΔπολλον, πῶς ἀγὼν κριθήσεται: 
Chorus: ὦ Νὺξ μέλαινα μῆτερ, ἄρ᾽ ὁρᾷς τάδε; 
Orestes: νῦν ἀγχόνης μοι τέρματ᾽, ἢ φάος βλέπειν. 
Chorus: ἡμῖν γὰρ ἔρρειν, ἢ πρόσω τιμὰς νέμειν. 


Eur. Medea 1363 ἴ.: 
Jason: ὃ τέκνα, μητρὸς ὡς κακῆς ἐκύρσατε. 


Medea: ὦ παῖδες, ὡς ὥλεσθε πατρῴᾳ νόσῳ. 


Theo.—xbpwos δὲ τῶν ἐμῶν τίς; Cho.—és ἔλαβεν πατρὸς πάρα. 
(Catchword + δέ for further definition; cf. Plato’s use, Ρ. 57; ellipsis of 
verb to be supplied from previous speech.) 
Theo.—@rn ἔδωκεν ἡ τύχη μοι. Cho.—rT δὲ χρεὼν ἀφείλετο. 
(Virtual catchword; catchword balance; catchword antonym.) 
Theo.—ovd σὲ τἀμὰ χρὴ δικάζειν. Cho.—iv γε βελτίω λέγω. 
(Ellipsis of χρὴ με δικάζειν, to be supplied from preceding.) 
Theo.—apxbuer 0’ ἄρ᾽, οὐ κρατοῦμεν. Cho.—8ata δρᾶν, τὰ δ᾽ ἔκδικ᾽ οὔ. 
(Const. cont. with correction—or, ellipsis.) 


ΟΕ: 25- 1 Cf. p. 84 for Shakespeare’s use. 


34 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


Aeschylus does not use exact mocking balance in any case, but the spirit 
is clear in several cases: Choeph. 918 f.: 
Clyt.: μὴ GAN’ εἴφ᾽ ὁμοίως καὶ πατρὸς τοῦ σοῦ paras. 
Orestes: μὴ λεγχε τὸν πονοῦντ᾽ ἔσω καθημένη. 


with which cf. Eur. [ph. Aul. 1134 f.: 
Agam.: σὺ δ᾽ ἤν γ᾽ ἐρωτᾷς εἰκότ᾽, εἰκότ᾽ ἂν κλύοις. 
Clyt.: οὐκ ἄλλ᾽ ἐρωτῶ, καὶ σὺ μὴ λέγ᾽ ἄλλα μοι. 


Eumen. 711-14 (cf. Eumen. 727-30): 
Chorus: καὶ μὴν βαρεῖαν τήνδ᾽ ὁμιλίαν χθονὸς 
ξύμβουλός εἰμι μηδαμῶς ἀτιμάσαι. 
Apollo: κἄγωγε χρησμοὺς τοὺς ἐμόυς τε καὶ Διὸς; 
ταρβεῖν κελεύω μηδ᾽ ἀκαρπώτους κτίσαι. 


Possibly Aesch. Supp. 924 f.: 


Herald: ἀγοιμ᾽ av, οὔ τις τάσδε μὴ ᾿ξαιρήσεται. 
King: κλάοις ἂν, εἰ ψαύσειας, οὐ μάλ᾽ ἐς μακράν. 


In Sophocles there are several good cases: Oed. Tyr. 547-52: 
Creon: τοῦτ᾽ αὐτὸ viv μου πρῶτ᾽ ἄκουσον ὡς ἐρῶ. 
Oedipus: τοῦτ᾽ αὐτὸ μή μοι φράζ᾽, ὅπως οὐκ εἶ κακός. 
Creon: εἴ τοι νομίζεις κτῆμα τὴν αὐθαδίαν 
εἶναί τι τοῦ νοῦ χωρίς, οὐκ ὀρθῶς φρονεῖς. 
Oedipus: εἴ τοι νομίζεις ἄνδρα συγγενῆ κακῶς 


δρῶν οὐχ ὑφέξειν τὴν δίκην, οὐκ εὖ φρονεῖς. 


1 Septem 1041-45 is nearest it. Cf. p. 30. 


3 Final assonance is intentional, I believe. Cf. Alc. 723, quoted below; Septem 
255, quoted above; Philoc. 100 f.: 


Neop.: τί μ᾽ οὖν ἄνωγας ἄλλο πλὴν ψευδῆ λέγειν; 


Οὐνς.: λέγω σ᾽ ἐγὼ δόλῳ Φιλοκτήτην λαβεῖν. 
Ton 368 1.: 


Ton: αἰσχύνεται τὸ πρᾶγμα: μὴ EéNevxé νιν. 

Creusa: ἀλγύνεται δέ γ᾽ ἡ παθοῦσα τῇ τύχῃ. 
on which Paley writes: “ΤῊ same inharmonious collision οἱ αἰσχύνομαι and ἀλγύνομαι 
occurs in Herac. 541-42’; while Jerram says: ‘‘The homophony in Ion’s ale χύνεται 
and Creusa’s ἀλγύνεται is intentional. Dr. Verrall has preserved the correspondence 
in a different form by translating ‘his tender honour’ and ‘his tender victim.’”’ Ores. 
1128 f.: 

Orestes: καὶ τόν ye μὴ σιγῶντα ἀποκτείνειν χρεών. 

Pyl.: εἶτ᾽ αὐτὸ δηλοῖ τοὔργον οἷ τείνειν χρεών. 
So, too, I think, Philoc. 108 ff.: .... τὸ ψευδῇ λέγειν; ... . τὸ ψεῦδος φέρει; 

. τολμήσει λακεῖν; . . . . οὐκ ὀκνεῖν πρέπει. 


nial tl nee νον, ee 


—— 


-_ τοὺ 


USE OF PARTICLES AND SPECIAL DEVICES 35 


And, with the same challenging τοί, Antig. 522 ἴ.: 
Creon: οὔτοι ποθ᾽ οὗχθρός, οὐδ᾽ ὅταν θάνῃ, φίλος. 
Antig.: οὔτοι συνέχθειν, ἀλλὰ συμφιλεῖν ἔφυν. 


Cf. 544 ff., where there is also a harping on the verb: 
Ismene: μήτοι, κασιγνήτη, μ᾽ ἀτιμάσῃς τὸ μὴ οὐ 
θανεῖν τε σὺν σοὶ τὸν θανόντα θ᾽ ἁγνίσαι. 
Antig.: μή μοι θάνῃς σὺ κοινὰ μηδ᾽ ἃ μὴ ᾽θιγες 
ποιοῦ σεαυτῆς: ἀρκέσω θνήσκουσ᾽ ἐγώ. 


Less obvious is Elec. 1031 f.: 
Electra: ἄπελθε: σοὶ yap ὠφέλησις οὐκ ἔνι. 
Chryso.: ἔνεστιν: ἀλλὰ σοὶ μάθησις οὐ πάρα. 


A few types from Euripides follow. Alc. 723 f.: 


Pheres: φίλον τὸ φέγγος τοῦτο τοῦ θεοῦ, φίλον. 
Admetus: κακὸν τὸ λῆμα κοὺκ ἐν ἀνδράσιν τὸ σόν. 


Ores. 1587 f.: 
Menelaus: ὃ μητροφόντης ἐπὶ φόνῳ πράσσει φόνον. 
Orestes: ὃ πατρὸς ἀμύντωρ, ὃν σὺ προύδωκας θανεῖν. 


Androm. 577-80: 
Peleus: χαλᾶν κελεύω δεσμὰ πρὶν κλαίειν τινά, 
καὶ τῆσδε χεῖρας διπτύχους ἀνιέναι. 
Menelaus: ἐγὼ δ᾽ ἀπαυδῶ τἄλλα 7’ οὐχ ἥσσων σέθεν 


ΝΥ nw “~ ’ 4 
Kal τῆσδε πολλῷ κυριώτερος γεγώς. 


There is extended use of such taunting balance in Seneca, early French 
drama, and Shakespeare, illustrations of which will be found in the 
chapters dealing with later drama. 

Just as in these cases the form of the preceding speaker’s remarks is 
picked up, so an individual word or phrase may be seized upon and 
repeated, amplified, explained, or questioned. While the two usages 
illustrate alike the alertness of attention with which each speaker follows 
the other’s words, the results in the two cases are decidedly different. 
The catching up of word or phrase gives a crisp, snappy effect, even if 
it be but in a categorical assent, and affords great opportunity for 
subtlety and lively counterplay.' Here too, of course, there are various 

«Gross, p. 85, referring to the Streitscenen: “Da das Wort aber die Waffe der 


Zankenden ist, so nimmt er bei der Erwiderung gern ein Wort des Gegners auf, um 
diesen damit selbst zu treffen.” Cf. Jebb on Oed. Tyr. 622. 


36 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


degrees of liveliness and picturesqueness, which may be ranged somewhat 
as follows: (1) least noticeable, repetition of a word in assent; (2) use 
of a synonym, with evident intention to avoid repetition; (3) repetition 
of a word to qualify or emphasize it; (4) use of a balanced or contrasted 
word, usually with a tendency toward opposition or argument; (5) inten- 
tionally misunderstanding, changing, or adding to the meaning of the 
opponent’s words. I have included here as the second class of these 
“‘catchwords”’ (if I may use the word in a new meaning) use of a synonym 
with evident intention to avoid repetition. It is clear that this is done 
at times, but it is equally clear that in most cases these synonyms were 
virtually catchwords, so intended and so accepted. These virtual 
catchwords form a large class in themselves and help to explain or add 
force to many otherwise weak passages." 

Cases of changing the meaning of or misunderstanding the other 
speaker’s word are especially interesting, not for purposes of classifica- 
tion, but individually. In Bacch. 814-15 Pentheus’ ambiguous λυπρῶς, 
which was meant with the participle, is taken by Dionysus with the 
verb and picked up by πικρά and the contrasted ἡδέως, In Helen 1201 
μόλοι picking up ἥκει is almost a pun if it means here “achieve” or 
“attain to.”’? In Elec. 256-57 ἀπαξιῶν with bad meaning, “disdaining,” 
is taken up by οὐκ ἠξίου, “ did not count himself worthy,” ‘‘ was unwilling.” 
Ibid. τόρ, in the repeated εὖ φρονῶ of the old man, is there not a rever- 
sion to the etymological meaning as opposed to the idiomatic meaning 
of the line before? In Supp. 576-77 Theseus purposely ignores the 
idiomatic meaning of πράσσειν πόλλ᾽, “to play the busybody,” and quotes 
it as πονούσῃ πολλά. In Aesch. Agam. 539 χαῖρε, the greeting is changed 
to χαίρω literal, a pun often used in subsequent plays. Eumen. 606 
ἐν αἵματι may have a lurking idiomatic meaning beyond that of ὅμαιμος 
which it takes up, but this is far from certain. Soph. Antig. 729-30 
τἄργα in the general sense of deeds is caught up by ἔργον in the narrower 
sense of duty. In 565 of the same play the idiomatic κακῶς πράσσουσιν 
of 564 is repeated as πράσσειν κακά in the literal sense. Instances might 
be multiplied. 


«Cf. Aesch. Supp. 304; Choeph. 221; Eumen. 896; Soph. Antig. 512; Elec. 397; 
Eur. Herac. 965; Hippol. 724. 


2 Or it may be ἤκει whose meaning is changed and added to as compared with ἥκει 
of the preceding line. The line has long been under dispute. Cf. editions of Pearson 
and of Herwerden who cite Pflugk, Klotz, Hermann, Kirchoff, Dobree, Badham, 
Jerram, Paley. 


i . 


USE OF PARTICLES AND SPECIAL DEVICES 27 


The use οἵ antonyms or, in general, of balanced or contrasted words 
is so frequent that I will refer only to a few typical cases: Aesch. Agam. 
622, Ta ψευδῆ and τἀληθῆ (with xedvé balancing καλά); Choeph. 925, 
μητρός and πατρός: Soph. Elec. 1031-32, ὡφέλησις and μάθησις, and just 
below, 1037, ἐπισπέσθαι and ἡγήσει; Eur. Helen 1632, κακίστην and εὐσεβεσ- 
τάτην; 1636, ἔδωκεν ἣ τύχη aNd τὸ δέ χρεὼν ἀφείλετο. 

Repetition of a word without misunderstanding or change of mean- 
ing, but building a new thought about it, is one of the most frequent 
usages of stichomythia, not only in the three Greek dramatists, but in 
Latin and English as well. It serves for all moods from calm, friendly 
conversation to the bitterest quarrels, but becomes more distinctive in 
the more agitated passages. It would be an interesting and, I believe, 
profitable exercise to collect and discuss all the more characteristic and 
less conventional instances,‘ but I stop now only to comment on the 
effect produced of linked, almost overlapping, speeches where the catch- 
words are most frequent. Sophocles was especially clever at this, as 
witness Ajax 1125 ff.; Amtig. 729 ff. The tendency of Euripides is to 
link the verses in pairs by such devices rather than to make whole 
passages continuous; cf. Herac. 252 ff. Both Euripides and Sophocles, 
however, occasionally harp on one word for a number of lines together, 
as in Soph. Elec. 795 ff., παύω; Antig. 733 ff., πόλις; Eur. Alc. 1126 ff., 
δάμαρτα: Elec. 967 fi., μήτηρ, πατήρ. 

In perhaps two-thirds of the cases these catchwords are so obvious 
and emphatic that no attempt is made to point them out by demon- 
strative articles or particles or conspicuous position. In the other one- 
third we find various uses. Most frequent are the deictic article or ὅδε 
in its various forms, and δῆτα, but there occur also δή, καὶ δή, καὶ μήν, γέ, 
motos (sarcastic or incredulous), and the absolute ungrammatical repeti- 
tion of the word as if in quotation marks or echoed in surprise. Emphasis 
of position I will speak of by itself. In the earliest play of all, the Sup- 
plices, we find καὶ δή twice? (though at 438 it is not strictly in stich- 
omythia), and two cases, vss. 210, 216, of a catchword with δῆτα,3 
interesting because so similar. Each is the repetition of an optative 
wish, but changed from active to middle without change of meaning. 

Gross, pp. 85-86, gives a list of the more interesting cases, but this does not pre- 
tend to be complete. 

2 Found also in its idiomatic sense of “Well, suppose that . . ..- » Eum. 894. 


3 Cf. Jebb on Oed. Tyr. 445. Cf. Eur. Elec. 672-76 for imitation (9) of the Supplices 
passage. 


38 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


Evidently the one was suggested by the other, whether consciously or 
not. δή alone with the repeated word is very rare, though so common 
in Plato. μέντοι, too, is unusual, though normal in Plato. For καὶ μήν: 
cf. Agam. 931; Ajax 794. γέ is rarely used except in connection with 
the demonstrative, a particle, or a ‘‘quoted” word. Cf., e.g., Herc. Fur. 
557; Iph. Aul. 405. The forms of ὅδε (cf. Agam. 942; Herc. Fur. 714) 
are less frequent than the simple article with the force of a second- 
personal demonstrative. Cf. Herac. 272 (where the point may easily 
escape notice); Orestes 1521; Iph. Aul. 700, and, in my opinion, Eur. 
Elec. 254; Philoc. 1225, and other such cases. Sophocles has a favorite 
idiom, though one not peculiar to him, for which see Ajax 792, τὴν σὴν 
πρᾶξιν; Philoc. 1251, τὸν σὸν φόβον (taking up φοβεῖ); and Elec. 1110, 
τὴν σὴν κληδόν᾽ (taking up φήμης). There are few cases in Aeschylus? 
and Sophocles of the word echoed or quoted without the demonstrative, 
but Euripides has this trick of style frequently; cf. Alc. 807; Herc. Fur. 
557, 1134; Supp. 124; Iph. Aul. 833. 

With or without the particles a catchword is often made conspicuous 
by its position, that is, by being placed either first or last in the verse 
or in a position corresponding to that held by the original word in its 
verse. For position at beginning or end of verse cf., merely as a con- 
venient illustration, Hippol. 317, 319, 604, 614, and Bacch. 963, where 
μόνος is caught up and used at beginning and end of the “cyclic”’ verse. 
Any animated stichomythia will furnish instances, from the Supplices 
of Aeschylus down to our own time. The balanced position for the 
catchword is less frequent when the same word is repeated, but very 
common in case of virtual catchwords. In nine cases out of ten this 
parallelism forms an antiphonal prayer or appeal, or is angry and 
taunting in spirit. This is not because of the catchword, but is a result 
of mocking the form. Cases where there is no taunt or apparent anger 
are practically confined to the true catchwords. A few illustrations 
will make these points clear. In Aeschylus, Prom. Bound 69 f.: 

Hephaes.: δρᾷς. ... 

Kratos: Doh ss es 
So Eumen. 202 f.: 

Chorus:  €xpnoas .... 


Apollo:  €xpnoa.... 


τ Cf. Jebb on Oed. Tyr. 1004. 

2 The only good case in Aeschylus, Prom. 972 (quoted below, p. 48), marks a type 
of response which is psychologically very interesting. Cf. Prom. 978; Soph. Philoc. 
1236; Antig. 741; Eur. Alc. 1086; Bacch. 970; Hec. 786; Helen 1633; Iph. Aul. 305; 
Bacch. 652. So in Shakespeare, Coriolanus, III, 1; Titus Andronicus, 1, 1; Winter's 
Tale, V,1; Richard III, IV, 4. 


USE OF PARTICLES AND SPECIAL DEVICES 39 


Septem 1041-45 (genuineness of this passage disputed; τραχὺς δ᾽ in 
1045 Schmidt’s emendation for tpaxvv’): 


Herald: αὐδῶ -. 
Antig.: αὐδῶ τ τὰς 
Herald: τραχύς γε. . .. 
Antig.: τραχὺς δ. τς 


In Sophocles, Ατηρ. 522 ἴ.; Oed. Tyr. 547-50 (quoted on p. 34); Ajax 
1360 f.: 


Agam.: τοιούσδ᾽ ἐπαινεῖς... . 
Odys.: σκληρὼν ἐπαινεῖν. . . . 


In Euripides, I[ph. Aul. 11341.; Orestes 1587 {. (quoted on p. 35); 


Alc. 1085 f.: 
Heracles: χρόνος μαλάξει. . . 


Admetus: χρόνον λέγοις ἂν. . .. 


As Gross has pointed out,’ this mimicking of one’s adversary is the 
natural weapon of boorish quarrel, and is used as well in more dignified 
argument. Seneca has even more of it than the Greek, and Shakespeare, 
too, is fond of it.? 

One word more needs to be said in connection with catchwords. I 
have mentioned: the occasional tendency to harp on a single word in a 
passage. This is sometimes a result of the insistence of one speaker, 
not a tossing back and forth of a catchword. Cf. Hippol. 93, 94, 99, 103, 
σεμνός; Choeph. 174, 176, 178, ἰδεῖν ὁμόπτερος, προσφερὴς ἰδεῖν, προσεί- 
δεται, and less obviously below, 213, 214, 218, τυγχάνειν, κυρῶ, τυγχάνω; 
Bacch. 828, 830, 836, στολήν. In other cases the repetition seems to be a 
mere echo, the best illustration of which is Aesch. Supp. 300, 303, 306, 
313, Bot and βοός. 

I have spoken (p. 32) of “stop-gap verses.” Neither this phrase 
nor Gross’s Fiillverse really does justice to the type, for the name implies 
that they were unnecessary, and this is not always true. Aeschylus has 
at least fourteen cases. Of these, Pers. 735; Agam. 268, 543; Choeph. 
767; Eumen. 420, 431, 601, are all of the same type: πῶς δή; or πῶς φής;, 
followed by a more or less pertinent comment on the speaker’s failure to 
understand. They advance the situation not at all; their only apparent 
purpose in the dialogue is to preserve the rigid symmetry. Choeph. 
118 and 120 at first sight look equally empty, but a reading of the 


τ Op. cit., p. 85. Cf. also Jebb on Oed. Tyr. 622; Philoc. 1252. 
2 Cf. pp. 81, 84. SiR ΤΙΣ 


40 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


passage shows that Electra is craftily pretending ignorance or hesitation 
in order to lead the chorus on to definite statement of the prayer for 
vengeance.t The eager interruptions of Choeph. 175 and 528 and the 
puzzled questions of the king in Supp. 456, 458, 460, 462, 464 are more 
than stop-gap verses, as we must feel on reading the passages. By 
delaying the real object of our attention, they serve to make that 
attention more keen, just as in music the repetition of a series of tran- 
sition chords brings to a nervous tension our desire for the final domi- 
nant chord. Andasa listener subconsciously realizes and half utters the 
chord for which his ears are straining, so the speaker of a verse of this 
sort often anticipates the answer in his question. To choose at random, 
cf. Choeph. 530; Soph. Elec. 1191; Oed. Col. 645; Eur. Hec. 1272; 
Medea 680; Ion 303.3 This use of dramatic suspense is found oftenest 
in Euripides, as we might expect, though with him it degenerates into a 
mannerism. Plato, too, with equal dramatic instinct makes abundant 
use of such stop-gap questions or answers, usually of the conventional 
“1 don’t understand” type. As in Euripides, this becomes in his later 
dialogues somewhat of a mannerism.‘ 

As may be seen from the examples already cited, there are favorite 
types of these stop-gap verses, especially when they become with Eu- 
ripides conventional. Sophocles has few verses (not over a dozen in all) 
artificial enough to be classed under this head, and these vary so widely 
in form as scarcely to duplicate at all.s Aeschylus’ favorite is the πῶς δή; 
line mentioned above. Euripides has this form very frequently with its 
modifications. It is really part of a broader type, viz., a word or phrase 
(a) justified or (ὁ) amplified by the rest of the verse. A few illustrations 
will make this clear. 


a) Iph. Taur. 247: ‘Greeks. (1 speak thus briefly for) this is all I know.” 
Ibid. 1045: “‘I—for to me alone is it lawful to touch the images.” 
Ibid. 1161: ‘‘Abomination—for with sacred meaning do I utter the word.” 
Ibid. 1172: “Murder of whom? For I have become eager to learn.” 

δ) Herc. Fur. 543 (punctuating after στάσει): ‘By power of faction; he holds 
sway over seven-gated Thebes.”’ 


ΟΣ Ἢ, δ᾽ Ὁ; 3: 
2 Flagg, on Eur. ]ῤλ. Taur. 1040; quoted on p. 109, n. 3. 


3 Eur. Herc. Fur. 714 is an exaggerated case, if we keep the manuscript reading. 
Cf. editors ad loc. 

4 Cf. Campbell, Introduction to edition of Plato’s Sophist and Politicus, p. xxxviii 
and pp. xx—xxi, for a general statement of this tendency to mannerism. 

5 But cf. Elec. 1112 with Philoc. 1231. 


USE OF PARTICLES AND SPECIAL DEVICES 41 


Ibid. 555: “ΒΥ force—thy father cast forth from his bed” (if we may 
accept this reading). 

Hec. 995: ‘‘Safe—guarded in my palace.” 

Helen 1223: ‘‘Unburied—ah, woe is me for my sorrows!”’ 

Alc. 485: “‘ Unacquainted—I have never yet gone to the land of the Bistoni.”’ 


In most cases the first word or phrase is an abrupt, categorical answer 
and the rest of the line is in a way an apology for the abruptness. 

Another favorite form of stop-gap verse is that sometimes known 
as the dichotomic question. Very often the question thus asked is 
important to the sense, but the form is mere padding to fill the line. 
Aeschylus has the type in Prom. 765: 


To: θέορτον ἢ βρότειον; εἰ ῥητὸν, φράσον. 


which involves other filling as well. Cf. also Supp. 335; Pers. 715, 710. 
It is rare in Sophocles. Oed. Tyr. 993 is a fair example, somewhat 
reminiscent of the line quoted above: 


Mess.: ἢ ῥητὸν; ἢ οὐχὶ θεμιτὸν ἄλλον εἰδέναι; 


In Euripides we find it early and late. Cf. Alc. 520, 532; Ion 301, 310, 
316; Helen 786, 800, 816. The same fashion of thought is shown by 
verses in which one thought is expressed in two different ways with a 
sort of legal orotundity. Cf. Eur. Elec. 245, 628; Bacch. 1263; Supp. 
113; Soph. Elec. 1102; Aesch. Eumen. 593. 

The frequence of riddling passages from Supp. 455 ff. down through 
the dramatists and Plato makes very common the occurrence of the 
stop-gap verse “I don’t understand,” either phrased as so often in 
Aeschylus (p. 39) or in less conventional form and more impatient spirit; 
cf. Aesch. Supp. 464; Eumen. 420; Eur. ph. Aul. 523. Verses of this 
sort also are used, with less excuse, to interrupt prayers, requests, oaths, 
or statements of oracles; cf. Helen 1238; Elec. 564; Iph. Taur. 738; 
Medea 680. And finally, a combination of these stop-gap verses and 
dramatic asides may be found in passages where the speeches of one 
person are practically continuous, as in Hec. 239 ff.; Hippol. 337 ff.; 
Iph. Taur. 1203 ff.; Soph. Philoc. 1222 ff. Verses which are padded by 
mere periphrasis are too frequent to need more than mention. 

Stop-gap verses of the weaker sort often fail to interrupt the other 
speaker enough to alter his grammatical constructions. In antilabé 
where there is by nature more interruption this is especially true; cf. 
Bacch. 966 ff.; Τρ. Taur. 1203 ff.; Phoen. 604 ff.; Helen 1631 ff. But 
the farther the stop-gap verse gets from the purely formal, and the more 


42 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


necessary it is to the sense, so much the more does it affect the con- 
struction; cf., in the order given, Eur. Hippol. 337-43; Aesch. Choeph. 
527-31; tbid. 117-21; Eur. Herc. Fur. 713-17; Supp. 934-36. 

There is another type of interrupting verse more closely connected 
with dramatic asides than with true stop-gap verses. I mean cases of 
exclamation or appeal in place of direct answer. These too may be just 
as necessary to the progress of the dialogue and just as natural as a sen- 
tence in direct address, and are often more direct than a general gnomic 
phrase would have been. When Wecklein says of Darius’ exclamations 
in the Persae (731, 735), ‘““Sonst nicht im Dialog,” he is thinking only 
of the most rigid dialogue possible. Other typical cases in Aeschylus 
are Prom. 45, 66; Septem 808; Supp. 466; Agam. 1305; Choeph. 928, 
1057. Especially interesting are three cases. In Septem 251-56 the 
angry Eteocles tries to reason with the hysterical chorus, who do nothing 
but call for help. Choeph. 489-97 and Eumen. 744-47 are antiphonal 
appeals of dialogue form only. The spirit of the Choephori passage is that 
of the long kommos which precedes it. In the Euripidean passage which 
imitates this (Elec. 671-84) a formal dialogue precedes, and the effect 
of the balanced appeals is really that of interrupted dialogue. More 
truly kommoi in iambics are Hec. 415 ff. and Tro. 610 ff. Most of the 
hundred or more exclamatory verses in the course of dialogues are 
individual cases. There are a few instances of a series of exclamations: 
cf. the passage cited, Septem 251-56; Soph. Elec. 1179 fi.; Philoc. 895 ff.; 
Eur. Hippol. 337 ff.; Medea 328 ff. True dramatic asides are infrequent 
in Greek but do occur, e.g., Soph. Elec. 1174-75; Philoc. g10f.; Eur. 
Iph. Aul. 655, and a whole passage, Hec. 736-51, in which Hecuba 
debates with herself while Agamemnon impatiently interrupts." 

The quality of subtlety is noticeable, as a rule, more as an atmos- 
phere that surrounds and pervades a passage than as a definite feature. 
A few points, however, we can put our fingers on as the obvious agents 
of subtlety. Gnomic or epigrammatic verses, riddling or paradoxical 
statements, Sophoclean or tragic irony, the Yankee trait of question 
answering question and of clever evasion in general, sophistic quibbling, 
and, very rarely, open sarcasm, occur in about that order of frequence. 
By means of these devices, and sometimes even without them, stich- 
omythia furnishes much to be read into and between the lines. So 
swift and so constant is the change of speakers in this, as contrasted 
with an ordinary dialogue, that one has to be on the alert to catch 
secondary meanings, and suggestions which may determine the drift 


τ Cf. Shakespeare, Henry VI, V, 3, Margaret and Suffolk. 


USE OF PARTICLES AND SPECIAL DEVICES 43 


of the answer. Let me illustrate with one passage each from Sophocles 
and Euripides interpreted! as Meredith has interpreted his own dialogue 
in Rhoda Fleming.? 


Soph. Elec. 1021 ff.3 : 

Chrysothemis: Would that you had been such in purpose when our 
father died; for you would have stopped at nothing. 

Electra: I was such in nature, but weaker then than now in wisdom (so 
that I could not avenge him). 

Ch.: (And that lack of wisdom led you aright.) Practice to remain such 
in wisdom forever.* 

Elec.: As one refusing to share the deed you give me this advice. 

Ch.: (Yes, I refuse) for he who has a hand in this will probably fare ill. 

Elec.: (A prudent—and a cowardly—remark.) I envy you your prudence, 
but abhor your cowardice. 

Ch.: [Sarcastically] (Your slurs will not move me.) Even when you speak 
well of me I will endure the hearing (though I shall be troubled to find you 
agreeing with me). 

Elec.: Well, you shall never have that experience with me. 


τ Cf. also Tucker on Aesch. Supp. 509 fi., quoted in note on p. 7. 


2 Rhoda Fleming, chap. xliii: 

“T’ve always thought you were born to be a lady.” (You had that ambition, 
young madam.) 

She answered: “That’s what I don’t understand.” (Your saying it, Ὁ my 
friend!) 

“You will soon take to your new duties.” (You have small objection to them 
even now.) 

“Yes, or my life won’t be worth much.” (Know, that you are driving me to it.) 

“And I wish you happiness, Rhoda.’”’ (You are madly imperilling the prospect 
thereof.) 

To each of them the second meaning stood shadowy behind the utterances. 
And further: 

“Thank you, Robert.’’ (I shall have to thank you for the issue.) 

“Now it’s time to part.’’ (Do you not see that there’s a danger for me in 
remaining ?) 

“Good night.’’ (Behold, I am submissive.) 

“Good night, Rhoda.” (You were the first to give the signal of parting.) 

“Good night.” (I am simply submissive.) 

“Why not my name? Are you hurt with me?” 

Rhoda choked. The indirectness of speech had been a shelter to her, permitting 
her to hint at more than she dared clothe in words. 


3 Thought-ellipses are in parentheses; grammatical ellipses in pointed brackets; 
stage directions in square brackets. 


4Jebb: “The retort of Chrysothemis shows that she feels the reproach to herself 
implied by τότε. 


44 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


Ch.: (Never?) Long is the time of judgment in these things, even the 
rest of time. 

Elec.: (I will argue no longer with you.) Begone! for there is in you no 
will to aid. 

Ch.: Nay, there is, but in you there is no wisdom. 

Elec.: (If you will not aid,) go to your mother and tell her all this. 

Ch.: Nay, I have not such enmity for you (as to reveal your treason to her). 

Elec.: (If not enmity) at least you realize to what a place of dishonor you 
bring me (by deserting me and accusing me of madness). 

Ch.: Dishonor? No. But (I am moved by) forethought for you. 

Elec.: Then must I follow your idea of the right (as shown by the fruit 
of your forethought) ? 

Ch.: (Yes) (follow me while you are distraught,) for when your wits 
work well, then you shall lead us both. 

Elec.: (You mean well.) Truly it is a great pity that one speaking well 
should fail to speak aright. 

Ch.: (You say that of me?) You have described exactly the sickness 
with which you are afflicted. 

Elec.: What? (I fail to speak aright?) Do I not seem to you to speak 
with justice ? 

Ch.: (With justice, perhaps,) but there are times when even justice brings 
harm. 

Elec.: I do not care to live under such laws (where justice can bring 
harm). 

Ch.: [Abruptly] But (I warn you) if you do this (that you plan) you will 
(sometime) praise me (i.e., for my forethought). 

Elec.: Yet do this I will with no fear of you (1.6., your warning). 

Ch.: And is this true? Will you not change your purpose ? 

Elec.: (No,) for nothing is more hateful to me than an evil purpose 
(such as a change would mean). 

Ch.: It seems you will not consider [φρονεῖν] aught that I have said. 

Elec.: (No, for) these plans have been long considered [δέδοκται] by me 
and not just now. 
Eur. Alc. 38 ff.: 

Apollo: Fear not: I come with justicet and words of good faith. 

Thanatos: Then what is the need of bow and arrows, if you come with 
justice ἢ 

Ap.: (These need no explanation.) It is always my custom to carry them. 

Th.: (Yes, and) (always your custom) to give aid unjustly to this home. 


* Earle: “Note the play on words δίκην ἔχω in vs. 38 meaning ‘I am not guilty of 
injustice’ (an answer to ἀδικεῖς in vs. 30) while δίκην ἔχεις in vs. 39 means ‘If it is only 
a cause that you have to plead’—the language of the court.’’ A little over-subtle 
perhaps. 


USE OF PARTICLES AND SPECIAL DEVICES 45 


Ap.: (Not unjustly—lI give aid) because I am grieved by the sorrows of a 
man who is my friend. 

Th.: (Unheeding] And will you now deprive me of this second corpse ? 

Ap.: (Deprive you?) Why, I did not take even that other (i.e., Admetus) 
from you by force. 

Th.: [Neglecting his emphasis on ‘“‘by force’’] Then why is he upon the 
earth and not below the soil ? 

Ap.: (He saved his life) by giving in exchange his wife, for whom you 
now come. 

Th.: (Yes,) and (this time you will not prevent me:) I will carry her 
off beneath the earth. 

Ap.: (Ishall not try to prevent you.) Take her and go; for I do not know 
that I can persuade you. 

Th.: [With ironical innocence.] To slay one whom I should? Why, that 
is my duty. 

Ap.: No, but to bring death to those long awaiting it. 

Th.: (You mean, in this case, Pheres.) I understand your words and your 
desires, be sure. 

Ap.: Then is there any way that Alcestis might come to old age? 

Th.: There is not. Consider that even I delight in my prerogatives. 

Ap.: (But this is your prerogative;) you may take a single life, no more. 
(Then why not some other life rather than hers ?) 

Th.: (I can take but one life, but) I win a greater prize in the death of the 
young. 

Ap.: (Why if it is a rich prize you wish, what matters the age?) Even 
if she die an aged woman, she will be buried with rich obsequies. 

Th.: (The principle of such an arrangement is bad.) You establish a 
custom favorable to the wealthy. 

Ap.: What’s that you say? (It smacks of philosophy.) Are you a 
philosopher, and I knew it not ἢ 

Th.: They who could would purchase the right to die old. 

Ap.: Then (not to quibble further), it does not seem good to you to 
grant me this favor ? 

Th.: By no means; and (you did not need to ask, for) you know my nature. 

Ap.: [Angrily] (Yes, and I know it is) hated by mortals and abhorred 
by the gods. 

Th.: (Revile me all you will, you will not move me. The fault of your 
nature is to want all things your way.) You cannot have ail things that you 
should not. 


τ Reading with L: ὠνοῖντ᾽ ἂν ols πάρεστι γηραιοὺς θανεῖν. With the reading 
ὄναιντ᾽ ἂν ods (of 1), “They would be blest who could die old,” the meaning is the same 
but more ambiguously expressed. 


46 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


Let us turn now to the detailed devices for producing effects of 
subtlety. Epigram, as we have seen, is far more frequent in Euripides 
than in the earlier dramatists, and in Seneca it becomes a habit, almost 
a fault. Of the twenty or so cases in Aeschylus’ all have the gnomic 
quality and the reflective tone of proverbs except the group in Agam. 
938-41 (and perhaps in Septem 716-19) which seem to be spontaneous 
epigrams. Contrast Prom. 39: 

Heph.: τὸ συγγενές τοι δεινὸν ἥ θ᾽ ὁμιλώ. 
with A gam. 938-39: 

Agam.: φήμη ye μέντοι δημόθρους μέγα σθένει. 

Clyt.: ὃ δ᾽ ἀφθόνητός γ᾽ οὐκ ἐπίζηλος πέλει. 
which might have served as model for several of Seneca’s passages. 
Supp. 455 ff. is an early instance of riddling speech with deliberate 
purpose. Agam. 943 is probably intended asa paradox. Sophocles, too, 
has little epigram,? for his subtlety lies deeper than the mere phrase. 
His various uses of the device may be seen in the two early plays. Antig. 
569 is metaphor; 571 has the gnomic plural, which we may see also in 
Ajax 1358 and in Eur. Elec. 265; Iph. Aul. 520; Iph. Taur. 1032. 
737-38 is true epigram, imitated in Seneca. 1048-50 is a proverb 
tauntingly used (cf. Creon’s interruption: ποῖον τοῦτο πάγκοινον λέγεις:): 
IO5I a spontaneous response in kind. Of 1055-56 the same is true. 
Ajax 1350-52 sound like apt proverbs; 1353 is a well-phrased paradox 
(cf. Agam. 943 and the elaborate riddling of Ajax 265 ff.); 1358 is an 
abrupt change to the gnomic plural, 1359 the imitative response. Even 
in Euripides the list of epigrammatic or riddling verses is not so long 
as we might expect.s In three plays there is none at all, Andromache, 
Heracleidae, and—strangely enough—Medea, unless we class vss. 330-31 
as epigrams. Of enigmatic and paradoxical verses here are three types: 

Helen 94: Teucer: Atas μ᾽ ἀδελφὸς ὥλεσ᾽ ἐν Τροίᾳ θανών. 
Alc. 141: Servant: καὶ ζῶσαν εἰπεῖν καὶ θανοῦσαν ἔστι σοι. 


1 Supp. 336, 337, 338; Seplem 716-17, 719, 1051; Prom. 30, 378 ff., 385, ο36; 
Agam. 548, 938-41, 1205, 1300, 1668; Choeph. 920-21; Ewmen. 428. 

2 Antig. τόρ, 571, 737-38, 1048-51, 1055-56; Ajax 1350-61; Elec. 398, 1042, 
1219; Oecd. Tyr. 438, 961; Philoc. 641, 1383; Oed. Col. 395, 592, 808, 1108. 

3 Alc. 54-59, 141, 381, 519 ff., 527-28, 540-42, 1078; Bacch. 480, 488, 1348; Hec. 
786, 884; Helen 94, 138, 309 f., 464, 588, 814, 1213, 1638; Elec. 236=352, 265, 633, 
972, 1131; Herc. Fur. 93-94, 550, 561, 1133, 1306; Supp. 119, 124, 204, 945; Hippol. 
107, 348, 610, 612, 615; I ph. Aul. 312, 333-34, 407-8, 520, 643, 645; Iph. Taur. 1032, 
1193; Ion 286, 337, 537, 957, 969; Ores. 748, 772-73, 1115, 1182, 1509; Tro. 1051; 
Phoen. 385 ff., especially 393-94, 396-97, 403, 597, 500, 721, 720-27, 731, 1675. 


USE OF PARTICLES AND SPECIAL DEVICES 47 


Herc. Fur. 1132: Amph: ἀπόλεμον, ὦ παῖ, πόλεμον ἔσπευσας τέκνοις. 
Two metaphorical uses in Jon are interesting? 


336: Creusa: ἄκουε δὴ τὸν μῦθον: ἀλλ’ αἰδούμεθα. 

Ton: ov Tapa πράξεις οὐδέν: ἀργὸς ἡ θεός [1.6., Aidds]. 
956: Pedag.: οὐδὲ ξυνήδει σοὶ τις ἔκθεσιν τέκνου; 

Creusa: at ξυμφοραί γε καὶ τὸ λανθάνειν μόνον. 


One passage, Phoen. 1675: 
Creon: ποῖ yap ἐκφεύξει λέχος; 
Antig.: νὺξ dp’ ἐκείνη Δαναίδων μ᾽ ἕξει μίαν. 


is of the true allusive type not found as a rule in the Greek, but very 
common in Seneca, as, e.g., Tro. 322 ff. The other passages listed in the 
note are gnomes, special epigrams or proverbs used as stop-gap verses. 
Citation of one group, from the Phoenissae, will be enough to show the 
types: 
392: Tocas.: δούλου τόδ᾽ εἶπας, μὴ λέγειν ἅ τις φρονεῖ. 
Poly.: τὰς τῶν κρατούντων ἀμαθίας φέρειν χρεών. 


Tocas.: καὶ τοῦτο λυπρόν, συνασοφεῖν τοῖς μὴ σοφοῖς. 
ρον, 1) 


(Cf. I[ph. Aul. 407; Antig. 523.) 
8. 523 
396: Locas.: αἱ δ᾽ ἐλπίδες βόσκουσι φυγάδας, ὡς λόγος. 
Poly.: καλοῖς βλέπουσαί γ᾽ ὄμμασιν, μέλλουσι δέ. 


(Cf. Bacch. 617; Agam. 1668.) 


403: Poly.: εὖ πρᾶσσε: τὰ φίλων δ᾽ οὐδέν, ἤν τι δυστυχῇς. 


(Cf. Elec. 1131; Herc. Fur. 559-61.) 


406: Locas.: 9 πατρίς, ὡς ἔοικε, φίλτατον βροτοῖς. 


Tragic irony is not peculiar to stichomythia, though it appears there 
to good advantage. Usually, however, we find in line-dialogue that false 
tragic irony in which one speaker, knowing the truth, uses veiled, 
ambiguous language while the other responds to the surface meaning 
only. A mere reference will suffice to Soph. Elec. 1448 ff.; Eur. Bacch., 
throughout, but especially 966 ff.; Iph. Aul. 640 ff.; Helen 1193 ff. and 
1412 ff. For sophistic quibbling, too, stichomythia is admirably fitted, 


1 Cf. Hec. 785-86, Agamemnon and Hecuba: 
Agam.: φεῦ φεῦ" τίς οὕτω δυστυχὴς ἔφυ γυνή; 
Hec.: οὐκ ἔστιν, εἰ μὴ τὴν τύχην αὐτὴν λέγοις. 
Cf. also Plato, Rep. 487 A: "Ἔστιν οὖν ὅπῃ μέμψει τοιοῦτον ἐπιτήδευμα... .. ; Οὐδ᾽ ἂν 
ὁ Μῶμος, ἔφη, τό γε τοιοῦτον μέμψαιτο. 


48 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


yet we find comparatively little. Orestes and the Furies in Eumen. 
602 ff.; Creon and the guard, Antig. 315 ff.; Admetus and Heracles, 
Alc. 509 ff.; Apollo and Thanatos, Alc. 54 ff.; Phaedra and her nurse, 
Hippol. 310 ff.—these are the only good instances. Add to these a few 
cases of clever evasion: Lichas in Trach. 393 ff.; Dionysus in Bacch. 
474 ff. (cf. Pentheus’ remark: τοῦτ᾽ αὖ παρωχέτευσας εὖ κοὐδὲν λέγων): 
Orestes in [ph. Taur. 402 ff.; Agamemnon in Πῤῆ. Aul. 1132, 1134. Of 
the many cases of question meeting question very few are of the true 
Yankee type, i.e., subtle evasion or defiant counter-question. Aesch. 
Supp. 336, whatever its meaning, is of this sort, as is Eumen. 427. 
Soph. Antig. 316-18 is not a true case; Antig. 735-36 and Philoc. 1383 
are. In Euripides, among the surest cases are Bacch. 649; Medea 1368; 
Herc. Fur. 559; Androm. 241; Helen 1227 (if punctuated as a question); 
Iph. Taur. 496; Elec. 983. Bacch. 830 is merely a change of subject 
which in itself answers the previous question. In Helen 98 the question 
is a prelude to an extended answer. 

Open sarcasm, or, to be more precise, irony, is rather foreign to the 
refined spirit of the Greeks. Aeschylus uses it in the Prometheus, that 
play of harsh tempers and strong wills, and has something very like it 
in the scene, Septem 245 ff., between Eteocles and the frightened chorus. 
One detail is particularly interesting, it is so modern: 


Prom. 971: Hermes: χλιδᾶν ἔοικας τοῖς παροῦσι πράγμασιν. 
Prom.: χλιδῶ; χλιδῶντας ὧδε τοὺς ἐμοὺς ἐγὼ 
Χ > X Ἢ Pf 
> ‘ ἮΝ \ x 9’ 2 4, id 
ἐχθροὺς ἴδοιμι: καὶ σὲ δ᾽ ἐν τούτοις λέγω. 
Prom. 977: Hermes: κλύω σ᾽ ἐγώ μεμηνότ᾽ οὐ σμικρὰν νόσον. 
Prom.: νοσοῖμ᾽ ἂν εἰ νόσημα τοὺς ἐχθροὺς orvyeiv.t 


τ Cf. Antig. 740-41, Creon and Haemon: 
Creon: ὅδ᾽, ὡς ἔοικε, τῇ γυναικὶ συμμαχεῖ. 
Haemon: εἰπέρ γυνὴ συ" σοῦ γὰρ οὖν προκήδομαι. 
Philoc. 1235-36, Odysseus and Neoptolemus: 
Odys.: πρὸς θεῶν, πότερα δὴ κερτομῶν λέγεις τάδε; 
Neoptol.: εἰ κερτόμησίς ἐστι τἀληθῇ λέγειν. 
Alc. 1085-86, Heracles and Admetus: 
Heracles: χρόνος μαλάξει, νῦν δ᾽ ἔθ᾽ ἡβᾷ σοι κακόν. 
Admetus: χρόνον λέγοις ἂν, εἰ χρόνος τὸ κατθανεῖν. 
Shakespeare, Merch. of Venice, V, 1, Gratiano and Nerissa: 


Gratiano: He will, an’ if he live to be a man. 
Nerissa: Ay, if a woman live to be a man. 


USE OF PARTICLES AND SPECIAL DEVICES 49 


In all Sophocles’ stichomythia I find only three conspicuous cases of 
irony: 


Elec. 393: Elec.: καλὸς yap οὑμὸς βίοτος ὥστε θαυμάσαι. 

Elec. 1028: Chrys.: ἀνέξομαι κλύουσα χῶταν εὖ λέγῃς. 

Oed. Tyr. 1066: Tocas.: καὶ μὴν φρονοῦσά γ᾽ εὖ τὰ λῷστά σοι λέγω. 
Oed.: τὼ λῷστα τοίνυν ταῦτά μ᾽ ἀλγύνει πάλαι. 


In Trach. 416 (=Eur. Supp. 567) and other verses of its sort we find the 
mild sarcasm of litotes. There are so few good cases in Euripides and 
these have so modern a touch that it is worth while to quote them. 
Alc. 720, Pheres to Admetus: 


μνήστευε πολλάς, ὡς θάνωσι πλείονες. 
Iph. Taur. 804, Iphigeneia to Orestes, who has declared himself: 
τὸ δ᾽ "Apyos αὐτοῦ μεστὸν ἥ τε Ναυπλία.: 
Herac. 739, servant to Iolaus, whom he is helping to the field: 
εἰ δὴ ποθ᾽ ἥξομέν γε: τοῦτο yap φόβος. 
Supp. 574, Theban herald to Theseus: 
ἢ πᾶσιν οὖν σ᾽ ἔφυσεν ἐξαρκεῖν πατήρ; 
Phoen. 405, Polynices to his mother, who asks: 
Mother: οὐδ᾽ ηὑγένειά σ᾽ ἦρεν εἰς ὕψος μέγα; 
Ροῖν.: κακὸν τὸ μὴ ἔχειν: τὸ γένος οὐκ ἔβοσκέ με. 
Ores. 1608-9: 
Men.: ἄπαιρε θυγατρὸς φάσγανον. Ores.: ψευδὴς ἔφυς. 
Men.: ἀλλὰ κτενεῖς μου θυγατέρ᾽; Ores.: οὐ ψευδὴς ἔτ᾽ εἶ, 
In the first four the irony is that of exaggeration; in the last two, of 
whimsical understatement and indirectness. The three following are 


rather cases of turning the joke on the previous speaker. 
Bacch. 796, Pentheus to Dionysus, who urges him to sacrifice: 


θύσω, φόνον ye θῆλυν, ὥσπερ ἄξιαι... . . 
Medea 606, Medea to Jason, who says, ‘“‘ You brought this on yourself”’: 
τί δρῶσα; μῶν yapotca kal προδοῦσά σε; 
Hec. 1268, Hecuba to Polymestor, who is foretelling her fate: 
σοὶ δ᾽ οὐκ ἔχρησεν οὐδὲν ὧν ἔχεις κακῶν; 
Finally, we have the irony of extreme politeness in Supp. 566 ff. at 
greater length than is worth quoting. 


t For this we have the good American equivalent: “Hell is fullof ....” ! 


CHAPTER IV 
PLATONIC DIALOGUE AND STICHOMYTHIA 


In one of the breathing-spaces of Socrates’ lively bout with Thrasy- 
machus in the first book of the Republic (348 A), he says to Glaucon: 
“Now if we talk with him [Thrasymachus], matching lengthy argument 
against argument, showing all the benefits that Justice brings, and he 
takes his turn again and then we make a rebuttal, then all benefits that 
each of us named on his side must be numbered and measured, and at 
length we shall need judges to decide; but if we look into the matter 
as we have been doing, by making admissions to each other, we shall 
ourselves be at once speakers and judges.’”’ And even when Thrasy- 
machus peevishly says (350 E): “Either let me say what I want or, if 
you want to ask questions, ask them, and I will say ‘yes’ and nod or 
shake my head for you as one does for old women telling their stories,” 
Socrates goes on with the dialectic method though Thrasymachus is 
plainly appealing for a return to his favorite fashion of argument, 
oratorical debate. The same contrast is made even more emphatically 
in Protagoras 334 C-338 E. Socrates protests that he is a forgetful 
fellow and cannot follow a long answer to his question (334 CD). Since 
Protagoras is skilled in both diffuse rhetoric and concise speech let him 
adopt the latter method for this discussion. Protagoras and Callias 
object; Alcibiades loyally supports Socrates, though he believes his 
friend is joking about his inability to follow (336 D). Critias, Prodicus, 
and Hippias, each in his own manner, propose a compromise which 
Socrates accepts with the result that they come to dialectic only after 
the lengthy exegesis of the Simonides passage. So in the Symposium 
(199 B), Socrates, when his turn comes to speak in praise of love, says: 
“T want to speak in my own fashion, not according to your speeches, 
that I may not be laughed αἱ. And finally: “Then let me ask Agathon 
a few little things, so that getting admissions from him I may go ahead 
and speak’’; which he actually proceeds to do. And in Alcibiades 
(106 B), which is in Plato’s style, if not by him, Socrates says: “You 
are asking, I suppose, whether I can make a long speech such as you are 
accustomed to hear. No, that is not my habit.”’ In short, in all his 
searching after truth, whether in kindly jest or in deepest earnestness, 
Socrates used with little variation, if we may trust Plato’s pictures of 


5° 


PLATONIC DIALOGUE AND STICHOMYTHIA 51 


him, question and answer as a basis. It is not credible that he felt 
himself unequal to the Sophists in convincing rhetoric, and Alcibiades 
was, of course, right in thinking his plea of bad memory a jest. Socrates’ 
own longer flights prove that he—or Plato—was a master of language 
in sustained passages. Indeed, the whole Republic is more constructive 
than dialectic. It is not enough to say that he was, as he says in the 
Theaetetus, an “intellectual midwife”’; that he felt that dialectic would 
draw out the true answer to a problem more surely and naturally from 
his respondent. Though he did attain this result, it was often at the 
expense of leaving that respondent puzzled or angered and unconvinced, 
like Thrasymachus in the passage quoted (354 A): “80 it seems, accord- 
ing to your argument!’’* Nor can we say that he felt that cautious, 
ever-logical question and answer was the only safe way for himself, as 
well as others, to grope toward the truth. No one can read any of the 
dialogues and believe that Socrates was not perfectly sure of his goal. 
Even in short dialogues like Charmides or Laches, where the sought-for 
definition is not found, one feels confident at the end that Socrates has 
accomplished here, too, his purpose—namely, to convince his young 
friends of the insufficiency of conventional definitions. Not lack of 
fluent speech, then, or of ability to hold an audience, led Socrates to 
adopt the more colloquial method of question and answer, nor was it 
inability thoroughly to comprehend his subject and all the logical steps 
involved. 

Two motives must have been behind his choice. He felt himself a 
teacher, not a rhetorician or a hermit-philosopher. As one of the world’s 
great teachers he saw clearly that for the pupil to work out his own 
problem, guided by wise questions, is better than for him to take notes 
on the cleverest and most intellectual lecture. But, as said before, this 
motive was not enough. I feel sure that an incidental but important 
consideration was Socrates’ appreciation of the dramatic quality and 
power of the dialogue. His whole attitude, his eccentricity of life, was 
more or less of a dramatic pose, a deliberate “playing to the gallery.” 
His frank avowals of ignorance and insufficiency are absurd if accepted 
as his true self-estimate, rather than as pieces of dramatic irony to lure 
on an opponent or draw out a learner. To believe that he thus played a 
part does not lessen our appreciation of his earnestness of purpose and 
his depth of conviction. And playing a part thus, he used the form of 


τ Cf. Alcibiades 112 D: “It doesn’t seem likely from what you say,’’ upon which 
Socrates proves to him that the saying is all on the part of the one who answers, not 
the one who questions. But this proof is as unconvincing as the whole dialogue. 


52 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


speech best suited to his character, the instrument alike of drama and 
of democratic human nature, the dialogue that springs up naturally 
between man and man. He pretended that it made no difference which 
asked and which answered so long as the dialogue made progress,’ but 
when Polus or Protagoras or Thrasymachus or Glaucon set out to direct 
the conversation, he soon wearied of the task or was somehow diverted 
from the position of leader to that of respondent. In brief, Socrates—or 
was it Plato ?—took natural dialogue, molded it into an art as the drama- 
tists had done before him, and stiffened it into a tool as no one had done 
before.? 

The dialogue of Plato’s polished and perfected, possibly idealized, 
versions of Socrates’ conversation differs in motive and outline from 


* Gorg. 462 B; Protag. 338 D, etc.; cf. Eur. Ores. 1576-77: 
Ores.: πότερον ἐρωτᾶν ἢ κλύειν ἐμοῦ θέλεις; 
Mene.: obdérep’: ἀναγκη 5’, ὡς ἔοικε, σοῦ κλύειν. 


2 Zeller, Philosophie der Griechen4, ΤΙ, 1, pp. 569 ff.: “ΡΙαΐῖο vereinigt diese beiden 
Anforderungen [dialektische und dichterische Darstellung] in dem philosophischen 
Dialog, durch welchen er sich zwischen die persénliche Gesprichfiihrung des Sokrates 
und die rein wissenschaftliche, fortlaufende Darstellung des Aristoteles in die Mitte 
stellt. Das sokratische Gesprach wird hier idealisirt, die Zufilligkeit seiner Veran- 
lassungen und seines Ganges wird durch ein strengeres wissenschaftliches Verfahren, 
die Mangel der Persénlichkeiten werden durch kiinstlerische Behandlungen ver- 
bessert; zugleich wird aber das Eigenthiimliche des Gespriichs die Gegenseitigkeit 
der Gedankenerzeugung bewahrt, [‘‘reciprocal kindling of thought,’’ Alleyne trans- 
lates] . . . . in den spateren wird der Dialog zwar zum Zweck einleitender Erérter- 
ungen und persénlicher Schilderung noch mit gewohnter Meisterschaft gehandhabt, 
sofern es sich dagegen um die Darstellung des Systems handelt, sinkt er fast zum 
blossen Form herab, und im Timdus wird er geradezu in die Einleitung verwiesen. 
Nur werden wir daraus nicht mit Hermann schliessen diirfen, dass diese Form fiir 
Plato eine blos aiisserliche Bedeutung gehabt habe, dass sie fiir ihn nichts weiter als 
eine beliebte und hergebrachte Einkleidungsweise sei, die er von seiner Vorgangern 
iiberkommen hatte, als sokratischer Schiiler in seinen ersten Versuchen anwandte, 
und dann aus Pietit und Anhinglichkeit gegen die Sitte beibehielt. Einen aiisseren 
Bestimmungsgrund zur Wahl dieser Form hatte er allerdings an den Unterredungen 
seines Lehrers, und ein Vorbild fiir ihre kiinstlerische Behandlung an der dramatische 
Poesie, namentlich wo diese der Sittenschilderung und der Reflexion diente, wie bei 
Epicharm, Sophron, Euripides. Aber dass sie vor Plato schon zu einer beliebten 
Manier fiir die philosophischen Darstellung geworden wire, ist nicht zu beweisen, 
und wenn es sich damit auch anders verhielte, wurden wir doch einem so selbstindigen 
und schépferischen, mit so feinem kiinstlerischem Gefiihl begabten Manne wie Plato 
zutrauen diirfen, dass er sich zu der Form welcher er sein langes Leben hindurch treu 
blieb, welche er auch da nicht verliess als sie ihm vielfach unbequem wiirde, nicht so 
alisserlich verhalten dass er sie nicht blos um des Herkommens willen gewihlt und 
nicht blos aus Gewohnheit beibehalten habe, dass sie vielmehr mit seiner ganzen 
Auffassung der Philosophie in innerem Zusammenhang stehe.” 


PLATONIC DIALOGUE AND STICHOMYTHIA 53 


the perfected dialogue of Sophocles’ plays. It is more businesslike, more 
rigid in form, less gifted with the charm of graceful naturalness, though 
in the interludes it rises close to the art of Sophocles. It differs, too, 
from stichomythia, in being less rigid in symmetry, not so largely ago- 
nistic, and less showily subtle. Perhaps it would be better said that 
Plato’s dialogue is not so bluntly agonistic as some parts of stichomythia, 
for on the average the dramatic form is not so animated by opposition 
as the few quarrel scenes lead us to believe. And, taking “‘agonistic”’ 
in its broadest sense, it is the leading motive in Plato’s argumentative 
dialogue and the jesting passages-at-arms of the interludes. The fact 
that, throughout, a superior mind is pushing or guiding an inferior toward 
conclusions, gives a sense of steady progress which is necessarily absent 
from an agonistic stichomythic passage. What subtlety there is in the 
dialogues, aside from the irony of self-deprecation, is mostly in the form 
of quibbles, humorous or serious. Now, quibbling in a serious argument 
meant, for Socrates, eristic, ἐρίζειν, and was a thing to be shunned in 
dialectic. In passage after passage he emphasizes the difference between 
the two forms of argument in motive and in effect. Cf. Rep. 454 A, 
499 A, 539 B, C; Theaet. 167 E. It is therefore only in quizzical inter- 
ludes or in such a character sketch as the Euthydemus that subtlety is 
found. But in both serious argument and relaxed conversation Platonic 
dialogue abounds in stichomythic details. Both literary forms are 
records of the natural speech of the Greeks, with all its unconscious 
psychology, records refined and perfected by artists. In the following 
pages will be found illustrations from Plato of all the devices, natural 
or rhetorical, which have been catalogued under stichomythia. Many 
of these are so obvious as to be commonplaces, but they are none the 
less devices. 

First, as to co-ordinating conjunctions, particles, and phrases: τέ 
is little used; δέ infrequent, καὶ found less often than in stichomythia 
in its regular use. Combinations like καί ye, καὶ μὴν are almost purely 
intensive, the καὶ having lost its connective force. They are found 
constantly in formulas of assent. καὶ μὴν is also a formula of transition 
used in carrying forward the argument, as in Rep. 328 D. καὶ introducing 
eager or incredulous questions: Soph. 249 A, Καὶ πῶς and again Kat τίν᾽ 
ἂν ἕτερον ἕχοι τρόπον; and at once, showing his state of mind: Πάντα 
ἔμοιγε ἄλογα ταῦτ᾽ εἶναι φαίνεται. The phrase 7 καὶ introducing questions 
in a logical series has been commented on.? 

* Cf. Ritter, Platon, I, 236, who cites the forty-four cases of καὶ πῶς to show that 
it is almost confined to the later dialogues. 

21 Cis 20. 


54 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


ἀλλά has the same idiomatic uses as in stichomythia. (a) “Well! 
...,” defiant: Callicles in Gorg. 488 B, ᾿Αλλά ταῦτα ἔλεγον καὶ 
τότε καὶ νῦν λέγω, and six times in the next four pages. (ὁ) “Well! 
....,” yielding a point: Rep. 327 B, Otros, ἔφη, ὄπισθεν προσ- 
έρχεται: ἀλλὰ περιμένετε. ᾿Αλλὰ περιμενοῦμεν, ἢ δ᾽ ὃς ὁ Γλαύκων. .. ., 
or Rep. 353 A, ᾿Αλλά, ἔφη, μανθάνω τε καί μοι δοκεῖ τοῦτο... .. (c) 
“What! .... ,” in questions of surprise: Euth. 15 A, “AAX’ οἴει, ὦ 
Σώκρατες, τοὺς θεοὺς ὠφελεῖσθαι ἀπὸ τούτων ἃ παρ᾽ ἡμῶν λαμβάνουσιν; 
᾿Αλλὰ τί δήποτ᾽ ἂν εἴη ταῦτα, & Εὐθύφρων, τὰ παρ᾽ ἡμῶν δῶρα τοῖς θεοῖς; 
Elliptical yép=“‘Yes, for . . ...”: Soph. 232 D, οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἂν αὐτοῖς 

ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν διελέγετο μὴ τοῦτο ὑπισχνουμένοις. Also in the phrase of 
assent πῶς γὰρ οὔ; et passim. yép=“No, for... . ᾿ (cf. p. 27): Rep. 
351 Ὁ, Πάνυ ἄγαμαι, qv δ᾽ ἐγώ, ὦ Θρασύμαχε, ὅτι οὐκ ἐπινεύεις μόνον καὶ 
ἀνανεύεις, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀποκρίνῃ πάνυ καλῶς. You γάρ, ἔφη, χαρίζομαι (= ““Ποίῃ- 
ing surprising; for I do it to please you”). Cf. Eur. Hippol. 279, 
quoted on p. 28, n. τ. But cf. also Gorg. 449 Ὁ; Theaet. 142 A, 
ἐθαύμαζον ὅτι οὐχ οἷός τ᾽ ἢ εὑρεῖν. Οὐ yap ἦ κατὰ πόλιν. Especially common 
in Plato is γὰρ with a repeated word in assent: Theaet. 153 A, Ov ῥάδιον, 
ὦ Σώκρατες. Οὐ γάρ, ὦ Θεαίτητε. Phaedr. 277 A, πολὺ δ᾽ οἶμαι, καλλιών 
.... [seven lines]... . Πολὺ γὰρ τοῦτ᾽ ἔτι κάλλιον λέγεις. Gorg. 
454 D, Οἴομαι μὲν ἔγωγε, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἄλλο. Καλῶς γὰρ οἴει. Here the 
ellipsis is so marked as to make necessary the translation, ‘Yes, and 
ΣΑΥΖ ΕΣ ts ”” Very frequent, too, is γὰρ οὖν with a repeated word or with 
φημί. γάρ in questions seems to be largely a development of the “Yes, 
for... .’ γάρ and is usually connected somehow with the repeated 
word: Euth. 9 Ὁ, Τί yap κωλύει, ὦ Sadxpares; (-ε πῶς yap ov;) Laches 
184, Τί yap ἂν τις καὶ ποιοῖ, ὦ Σώκρατες. Ibid. 185 C, Οὐ γάρ, ὦ Σώκρατες, 
περὶ τοῦ ἐν ὅπλοις μάχεσθαι σκοποῦμεν; (Socrates had used σκεπτόμεθα.) 


Gorg. 448 E, . . . . οὐκ ἀπεκρίνω. Οὐ γὰρ ἀπεκρινάμην ὅτι... . ; Ibid. 
462 D,... . ἤδη πέπυσαι παρ᾽ ἐμοῦ... . ; Οὐ yap πέπυσμαι ὅτι. . . . 5 


Constant use is made of γέ, unaided or with repeated word or in 
combination. πρός ye, ye μήν," καί ye, γ᾽ οὖν in a qualified assent, δέ ye 
in minor premise are perhaps the most frequent. Some ellipsis is 
always involved, except in such an emphatic statement as that of 
Socrates in Alcib. 109 E, Ναί, εἴ ye εὕροις. In the use of explicit negatives 
or affirmatives and in formulas of assent and dissent in general, stich- 
omythia is, of course, not to be compared with Platonic dialogue. 


τ Ritter, Platon, 1, 237, cites its sixty-six occurrences (twenty-five in Laws), 
showing that it is characteristic of the later dialogues only. 


PLATONIC DIALOGUE AND STICHOMYTHIA 55 


Plato has nearly a hundred stock variations ranging from ναί and ot," or 
categorical repetition of a word, to such a formula as Meno’s (78 C): 
Παντάπασί μοι δοκεῖ, ὦ Σώκρατες, οὕτως ἔχειν ὡς σὺ νῦν ὑπολαμβάνεις. 
Asyndeton is, of course, the rule in these answers. It occurs in certain 
other types as well, notably in defiant retort (Rep. 339 B, Σκόπει, ἔφη. 
Gorg. τος C, Αὐτὸς γνώσῃ), in a refusal to answer, or an evasive answer 
such as Callicles makes in the Gorgias. This sort of defiant asyndeton 
is shown well in such passages as Gorg. 489 B, Οὑτοσὶ ἀνὴρ οὐ παύσεται 
φλυαρῶν, and ibid. 467 B, otros ἀνήρ... ., interrupted by Socrates 
insisting on an answer. 

τί δῆτα, τί δή, and τί μήν are used as synonyms and about equally 
often. δῆτα is used in logical inferences, it is used to monotony in 
the negative οὐ δῆτα, and it is occasionally found with repeated words: 
Rep. 333 A, Συμβόλαια δὲ λέγεις κοινωνήματα ἤ τι ἄλλο; Κοινωνήματα δῆτα. 
Euthyd. 298 Ο,.. . . ἢ οἴει τὸν αὐτὸν πατέρα ὄντα οὐ πατέρα εἶναι; Ὡιμην 
δῆτα, ἔφη ὃ Κτήσιππος. δή is often used with the imperative in such a 
phrase as ἄκουε δή by one who is pressed to speak (Rep. 338 C; Gorg. 
506 C). This is, in a way, a case of a “virtual catchword,” for it involves 
the same situation as the more frequent δή with the indicative of a word 
just used in the imperative: Gorg. 462 D, Soc.: "Epod viv με, ὀψοποιία 
ἥτις μοι δοκεῖ τέχνη civa. Polus: “Epwr® δή, τίς τέχνη ὀψοποιία; Soc.: 
Οὐδεμία, ὦ dre. Polus: ᾿Αλλὰ τί; φάθι. Soc.: φημὶ δή, ἐμπειρία τις. 
Polus: τίνος; φάθι. Soc.: φημὶ δή, χάριτος... .. In every case there 
is a more or less defiant attitude assumed. Ellipsis, other than gram- 
matical such as will be mentioned in the next paragraph, is rare in Plato. 
Such cases as seem to approach ellipsis of thought fall into two types, 
answers to idiomatic sense, and answers to a part of the preceding 
question: Rep. 346 Ὁ, "Ap’ οὖν οὐδ᾽ ὠφελεῖ τότε, ὅταν προῖκα ἐργάζηται; 
Οἶμαι ἔγωγε. So Rep. 608 D, Οἴει ἀθανάτῳ πράγματι ὑπὲρ τοσούτου δεῖν 
χρόνου ἐσπουδακέναι, ἀλλ᾽ οὐχ ὑπὲρ τοῦ παντός; Οἶμαι ἔγωγε, ἔφη. Gore. 
496 Ὁ, Διψῶντα δὲ δὴ πίνειν ἄλλο τι ἢ ἡδὺ φὴς εἶναι; "Eywye (cf. ibid. 
502 (). Gorg. 467 E, Ap’ οὖν ἔστι τι τῶν ὄντων ὃ οὐχὶ ἤτοι ἀγαθόν γ᾽ ἐστὶν 
ἢ κακὸν ἢ μεταξὺ τούτων, οὔτε ἀγαθὸν οὔτε κακόν; Πολλὴ ἀνάγκη, ὦ Σώ- 
κρατες (cf. ibid. 453 Ὁ). 

In the matter of construction continued from one speaker to another, 
Plato has all the situations found in stichomythia, but his detailed 
arguments abound especially in categorical answers consisting of a word 


τ Not common, but cf. Gorg. 449 E, where he is striving for brevity. 
27lsin MSS BTPF; τένος in marg. f. 


56 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


in case relation or apposition. A very few examples will serve: Rep. 
339 D, τί λέγεις σύ; ἔφη. “A σὺ λέγεις, ἔμοιγε δοκῶ: Rep. 340 A, ἐὰν σύ 
γ᾽, ἔφη, αὐτῷ μαρτυρήσῃς, ὃ Κλειτοφῶν ὑπολαβών. Rep. 354 A, ταῦτα δή 
σοι, ἔφη, ὦ Σώκρατες, εἱστιάσθω ἐν τοῖς Βενδιδίοις. Ὑπὸ σοῦ γε, ἦν δ᾽ 
ἐγώ. Theaet. 142 A, Euc.: .... Θεαιτήτῳ ἐνέτυχον. ... Terp.: ζῶντι 
ἢ τετελευτηκότι; Euc.: Ζῶντι καὶ μάλα μόλις. Gorg.476D,.... τὸ 
δίκην διδόναι πότερον πάσχειν τί ἐστιν ἢ ποιεῖν; ᾿Ανάγκη, ὦ Σώκρατες, πάσχειν. 
(Here the πάσχειν is of course categorical answer, not governed by 
ἀνάγκη.) Gorg. 478 B, Soc.: τί οὖν τούτων κάλλιστόν ἐστιν; Polus: τίνων 
λέγεις; Soc.: Χρηματιστικῆς, ἰατρικῆς, δίκης. And below, 478 Ὁ, 
ἰατρευόμενος, ἢ μηδὲ κάμνων ἀρχήν; Polus: Δῆλον ὅτι μηδὲ κάμνων. So 
often with δῆλον ὅτι and δῆλον δή; cf. Gorg. 509 D, δῆλον δὴ τοῦτο γε, ὅτι 
ἐὰν δύναμιν. 

Balance of form apart from catchword repetition is unusual in Plato. 
One case of taunting parallelism, however, is conspicuous: Gorg. 495 D, 
Soc.: φέρε δὴ ὅπως μεμνησόμεθα ταῦτα, ὅτι Καλλικλῆς ἔφη ᾿Αχαρνεὺς ἡδὺ 
μὲν καὶ ἀγαθὸν ταὐτὸν εἶναι. . . . Call.: Σωκράτης δέ γε ἡμῖν ὁ ᾿Αλωπεκῆ- 
θεν οὐκ ὁμολογεῖ ταῦτα. ἢ ὁμολογεῖ; Cf. Eur. Ores. 1587 f., quoted on 
p. 35. Less obviously balanced is “‘Billingsgate”’ repartee like that of 
Euthydemus and Ctesippus (Euthyd. 298 D): Kai od dpa ἀδελφὸς εἶ τῶν 
κωβιῶν καὶ κυναρίων Kal χοιριδίων. Καὶ yap ov, ἔφη. Κάπρος dpa σοι πατήρ 
ἐστι καὶ κύων. Καὶ γὰρ σοί, ἔφη. Cf. Phaedrus’ appeal (Phaedr. 236 C): 

ἵνα δὲ μὴ τὸ τῶν κωμῳδῶν φορτικὸν πρᾶγμα ἀναγκαζώμεθα ποιεῖν ἀντ- 
ἘΣ ee ἀλλήλοις ἀμοωμα .... , where Jowett translates “Do not 
let us exchange ‘tu quoque’ as in a farce.” For the Yankee question 
meeting question cf. Rep. 343 A, 6 Θρασύμαχος ἀντὶ τοῦ ἀποκρίνεσθαι, Εἰπέ 
μοι, ἔφη, ὦ Σώκρατες, τίτθη σοι ἔστιν; Ti δέ, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγώ: οὐκ ἀποκρίνεσθαι 
χρῆν μᾶλλον ἢ τοιαῦτα ἐρωτᾶν; where Socrates’ answer is ambiguous, 
whether intentionally so or not. 

The repetition of a word used by the respondent—that is, the use 
of what I have called catchwords—is not nearly so noticeable in Plato 
as in stichomythia, but does occur fairly often. Of categorical repetition, 
which abounds in the dialogues, I have spoken above. Repetition with 
δή, yap, yap οὖν, and ye has also been illustrated. μέντοι should be added 
to the list; cf. Rep. 332 A; Hipp. 286 E (two good cases here). μὲν οὖν, 
too, is often a sign of assent, not of correction: Rep. 353 A, Ap’ οὖν οὐ 
τοῦτο τούτου ἔργον θήσομεν; Θήσομεν μὲν οὖν. Cf. Theaet. 153 B; Soph. 
247 A. For a word repeated and qualified cf. Euth. 14 E, 
ἐμπορικὴ, εἰ οὕτως ἥδιόν σοι ὀνομάζειν. Here belongs also the use of 


τ Cf. p. 32 for examples in drama. 


PLATONIC DIALOGUE AND STICHOMYTHIA 57 


δέ to pick up a word for further definition: Rep. 333 A, Πρὸς τὰ ovp- 
βόλαια, ὦ Σώκρατες. Συμβόλαια δὲ λέγεις κοινωνήματα ἤ τι ἄλλο; Ργοίαρ. 
τ 8 τ τ: ad’ ὧν ψυχὴ τρέφεται; φαίνεται γὰρ ἔμοιγε τοιοῦτός τις. 
τρέφεται δέ, ὦ Σώκρατες, ψυχὴ τίνι; Gorg. 470 Α, Ὅτι ἀναγκαῖον τὸν οὕτω 
πράττοντα ζημιοῦσθαί ἐστιν. Τὸ δὲ ζημιοῦθαι οὐ κακόν; So, picked up 
from one’s own words, Rep. 337 B, 338 B. Virtual catchwords in Plato 
are usually grammatical cognates: Soph. 226 C, σκόπει δὴ .... 


Ταχεῖαν ὡς ἐμοὶ σκέψιν ἐπιτάττεις. Euth. τὸ Β, Huth: .... χάρις;  Soc.: 
κεχαρισμένον ἄρα ἐστίν... .. Here Socrates adds a new meaning to 


Euthyphro’s χάρις, a device common enough in stichomythia, but rare 
in Plato. In this spirit Dionysodorus seizes on the word δημιουργόι in 
Euthyd. 301 C as a means of starting a new argument, but the contrast 
is not so immediate as in stichomythia. Akin to this is repetition with 
correction: Gorg. 469 C, Polus: Σὺ dpa βούλοιο ἂν ἀδικεῖσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ 
ἀδικεῖν; Soc.: βουλοίμην μὲν ἂν ἔγωγε οὐδέτερα" εἰ δ᾽ ἀναγκαῖον εἴη ἀδικεῖν ἢ 
ἀδικεῖσθαι, ἑλοίμην ἂν μᾶλλον ἀδικεῖσθαι ἢ ἀδικεν. Rep. 485 C, Εἰκός Ύ 
ἔφη. Οὐ μόνον γε, ὦ φίλε, εἰκός, ἀλλὰ καὶ πᾶσα ἀνα Κη ... - Use of a 
balanced or contrasted word is illustrated by Soph. 250 E, Μῶν οὖν ἐν 
ἐλάττονί τινι νῦν ἐσμεν ἀπορίᾳ περὶ τὸ ὄν; Ἐμοὶ μέν, ὦ ἕένε, εἰ δυνατὸν εἰπεῖν, 
ἐν πλείονι φαινόμεθα. 50 half-humorously, Rep. 484 B, τί οὖν, ἔφη, TO 
μετὰ τοῦτο ἡμῖν; Τί δ᾽ ἄλλο, ἣν δ᾽ ἐγώ, ἢ τὸ ἑξῆς; Gorg. 470 1), ᾿Αρχέλαον 
; . δρᾷς; Εἰ δὲ μὴ, ἀλλ᾽ ἀκούω γε. And cf. the frequent contrast of 
οἴομαι and οἶδα, as Rep. 341 A, 345 E. Balance of position may be seen 
in Gorg. 495 B, . . . ὡς σύ ye οἴει, ὦ Σώκρατες. Σὺ δὲ τῷ ὄντι, ὦ Καλλί- 
κλεις, ταῦτα ἰσχυρίζει; Ibid. 516 B, Call: πάνυ γε, ἵνα σοι χαρίσωμαι. 
Soc.: καὶ τόδε τοίνυν μοι χάρισαι ἀποκρινάμενος. Hipp. Minor 365 D; 
Soc.: τοὺς ψευδεῖς λέγεις οἷον ἀδυνάτους τι ποιεῖν, ὥσπερ τοὺς κάμνοντας, ἢ 
δυνατούς τι ποιεῖν; Hipp.: δυνατοὺς ἔγωγε καὶ μάλα σφόδρα ἄλλα τε πολλὰ 
καὶ ἐξαπατᾶν ἀνθρώπους. Soc.: δυνατοὶ μὲν δή, ὡς ἔοικεν, εἰσὶ κατὰ τὸν 
σὸν λόγον καὶ πολύτροποι: ἢ yap; Crito 44 B shows balance of both word 
and position: [Ἄτοπον τὸ ἐνύπνιον, ὦ Σώκρατες. "Evapyés μὲν οὖν, ὥς γέ μοι 
δοκεῖ, ὦ Κρίτων. Catchwords in Plato are rarely used in a series of 
remarks, but in Alcibiades (whose genuineness is still in dispute) we 
have two instances: 106 B, Soc.: . . - - ἐὰν ἐν μόνον μοι ἐθέλῃς βραχὺ 
ὑπηρετῆσαι. Alc.: ἀλλ᾽ εἴ γε δὴ μὴ χαλεπόν τι λέγεις τὸ ὑπηρέτημα, ἐθέλω. 
Soc.: ἢ χαλεπὸν δοκεῖ τὸ ἀποκρίνεσθαι τὰ ἐρωτώμενα; Alc.: οὐ χαλεπόν. Soc.: 
ἀποκρίνου δή. Alc.: ἐρώτα. And more like stichomythia, 109 E, Soc.: 
Nai, εἴ ye εὕροις. Alc.: "AXN οὐκ ἂν εὑρεῖν pe ἡγεῖ; Καὶ μάλα ye, εἰ 
ζητήσαις. Εἶτα ζητῆσαι οὐκ ἂν οἴει με; ἜἜνγωγε, εἰ οἰηθείης γε μὴ εἰδέναι. 
Εἶτα οὐκ ἣν ὅτ᾽ εἶχον οὕτως; In Rep. 352 Β ἃ virtual catchword gives us 


58 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


continuation of metaphor:! Etwxod τοῦ λόγου, ἔφη, θαρρῶν... “Ih 
δή, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγώ, καὶ τὰ λοιπά μοι THs ἑστιάσεως ἀποπλήρωσον ἀποκρινόμενος 
ὥσπερ καὶ νῦν. Cf. Aesch. Eum. 590: 

Chorus: ἕν μὲν τόδ᾽ ἤδη τῶν τριῶν παλαισμάτων. 

Orestes: οὐ κειμένῳ πω τόνδε κομπάζεις λόγον. 


“Stop-gap’’ remarks in Plato have been commented on very briefly 
in my pages on stop-gap verses in stichomythia.2, The verses have two 
purposes: to preserve rigid symmetry, and to heighten the effect of the 
final answer by delaying it. This former motive does not, of course, 
exist in prose dialogue. The latter is certainly at work in Platonic 
dialogue. True, the majority of these stop-gap remarks are of the 
conventional type, variously elaborated, which, as I said of their 
occurrence in Aeschylus, ‘‘advance the situation not at all.” But they 
do break up the monotony and lighten the strain of the continuous 
logical development by one speaker, and, by delaying, call attention to 
the important steps in that development.4 In Sophist and Politicus 
especially the method is used almost to excess. Here the favorite device 


is an interrupting ποῖον; or τὸ ποῖον; Soph. 242 Β,. ... τὴν δὲ... 
τὴν ὁδὸν. ... Ποίαν δή; Ibid. 243 Α,. . .. ἐκεῖνο δὲ ἀνεπίφθονον ἀπο- 
φήνασθαι. Τὸ ποῖον; and repeatedly .... τόδε. . Td ποῖον; Jowett 


translates these correctly as interruptions, punctuating with a dash 
the previous incomplete remark. Eur. [ph. Aul. 517 shows exactly the 
same thing: Agam. (cautious and reflective): ἀλλ᾽ ἐκεῖν᾽ οὐ λήσομεν. 
Menel. (eagerly): τὸ ποῖον; and guesses the thing that was not in Aga- 
memnon’s mind. Occasionally we find in Platonic dialogue intentional 
riddling: Soph. 221 D, Ap’ ὦ πρὸς θεῶν ἠγνοήκαμεν τἀνδρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα ὄντα 
συγγενῆ; Τίνα τοῦ; Τὸν ἀσπαλιευτὴν τοῦ σοφιστοῦ. Πῇ; Θηρευτά τινε 
καταφαίνεσθον ἄμφω μοι. Tivos θήρας ἅτερος; And even better, perhaps, 

«Cf. the personification continued between speakers in Phaedr. 260 D: Soc.: 
* Ap’ οὖν, ὦ *yaé, ἀγροικότερον τοῦ δέοντος λελοιδορήκαμεν THY τῶν λόγων τέχνην; ἡ δ᾽ 
ἴσως Gy εἴποι... .. Phaedr.: οὐκοῦν δίκαια ἐρεῖ, λέγουσα ταῦτα; 

2 Cf. p. 40. 

3E.g., Gorg. 491 D, πῶς “ εἁυτοῦ ἄρχοντα" λέγεις; passim, πῶς λέγεις; Rep. 
341 E, πῶς τοῦτο ἐρωτᾷς; Theaet. 146 D, πῶς τί τοῦτο λέγεις; Sophist 249 E, πῶς αὖ 
καὶ τί τοῦτ᾽ εἴρηκας; Gorg. 407 Δ, οὐκ οἶδ᾽ ἅττα σοφίζει. 7 ϊά. 498 Ὁ, ἀλλὰ μὰ Δί᾽ 


> 


οὐκ οἶδ᾽ 8 τι λέγεις. Hipp. Minor, 369 A, οὐ πάνυ τι ἐννοῶ, ὦ Σώκρατες, ὃ λέγεις, Euth. 
12 A, οὐχ ἕπομαι, ὦ Σώκρατες, τοῖς λεγομένοις. Cf. other examples given above. 


4 Τὴ less degree this is true of the constantly interpolated formulas of assent, but 
these are not so obviously a dramatic device as are puzzled questions. They are 
better characterized by Thrasymachus (Rep. 350 E): ἐγὼ δέ σοι, ὥσπερ ταῖς γραυσὶ 
ταῖς τοὺς μύθους λεγούσαις, elev ἐρῶ καὶ κατανεύσομαι καὶ ἀνανεύσομαι. 


PLATONIC DIALOGUE AND STICHOMYTHIA 59 


Meno 81 A, where we find almost the anticipating stop-gap verse of 
drama: Soc.: ἔγωγε: ἀκήκοα yap ἀνδρῶν τε καὶ γυναικῶν σοφῶν περὶ τὰ 
θεῖα πράγματα---. Τίνα λόγον λεγόντων; ᾿Αληθῆ, ἔμοιγε δοκεῖν, καὶ καλόν. 
Tiva τοῦτον, καὶ τίνες οἱ λέγοντες; The stop-gap which consists of a word 
or phrase justified or amplified by the rest of the line does not occur 
very often in Plato: Phaedr. 257 E, πῶς λέγεις τοῦτο; οὐ yap μανθάνω. 
Gorg. 497 B, οὐκ οἵδα 6 τι λέγεις: ὅτι ἔχων ληρεῖς. Gorg. 462 C, ἐμοιγε, εἰ 
μή τι ἄλλο λέγεις. The catchword type: Euth. 14 E, ἐμπορικὴ, εἰ οὕτως 
ἥδιόν σοι ὀνομάζειν. Dichotomic questions are frequent, but in every case 
that I have noticed they are vital to the sense, not mere padding: Gorg. 
463 D, Τί οὖν; καλὸν ἢ αἰσχρὸν λέγεις αὐτὴν εἶναι; Gorg. 468 E, Δικαίως 
λέγεις ἢ ἀδίκως; et passim. 

Plato makes practically no use of indirect allusion or of epigram in 
place of direct answer. The irony of false modesty or exaggerated 
politeness is common with Socrates. Sometimes the hidden meaning 
is so nearly obvious that the device becomes a kind of false tragic irony 
(cf. p. 47). Cf. Euth.6C, ... . καὶ ἄλλα σοι ἐγὼ πολλά, εἄνπερ βοίλῃ, 
περὶ τῶν θείων διηγήσομαι, ἃ σὺ ἀκούων εὖ οἶδ᾽ ὅτι ἐκπλαγήσῃ. Οὐκ ἂν 
θαυμάζοιμι. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μέν μοι εἰς αὖθις ἐπὶ σχολῆς διηγήσῃ. Theaet. 
146 D, Γενναίως γε καὶ φιλοδώρως, ὦ φίλε, ἕν αἱτηθεὶς πολλὰ δίδως καὶ ποικίλα 
ἀντὶ ἁπλοῦ. So with the colloquial ἔοικα, Euthyd. 296 C. Ci. Thrasy- 
machus (Rep. 348 C): εἰκός γ᾽, ὦ ἥδιστε..... A little sharper is his 
retort (339 B): σμικρά ye tows προσθήκη, with which cf. Gorg. 473 B ὡς 
σύ ye οἴει, ὦ Τῶλε. ᾿Αληθῆ ye οἰόμενος tows. A trick common in comic 
poets (cf. Arist. Peace 1061; Ter. Phormio 806, et passim) is that in 
Rep. 408 Ὁ: ἀλλ᾽ οἶσθα ods ἡγοῦμαι τοιούτους; "Av εἴπῃς, ἔφη Punning 
catchwords, virtual or actual, make good retorts: Rep. 406 B,.... 
δυσθανατῶν δὲ ὑπὸ σοφίας cis γῆρας ἀφίκετο. Καλὸν ἄρα τὸ γέρας, ἔφη, τῆς 
τέχνης ἠνέγκατο. Euthyd. 298 A, ἢ σὺ εἰ ὃ αὑτὸς τῷ λίθῳ; Δέδοικα μὲν 
ἔγωγ᾽, ἔφην, μὴ φανῶ ὑπὸ σοῦ 6 αὐτός: οὐ μέντοι μοι δοκῶ. Gorg. 
470 D (see p. 57), et passim for the “Opds;—AAN’ ἀκόυω ye joke. 
Philebus 54 D, Sxor&pev τοίνυν: ὀυδὲν yap ἀπολοῦμεν. ᾿Απολοῦμεν μὲν οὖν 
καὶ ταῦτά γε, ὦ ἸΠΙρώταρχε: εὑρόντες ὅ νῦν ζητοῦμεν, ἀπολοῦμεν τὴν περὶ αὐτὰ 


ταῦτα ἀπορίαν. ᾿Ορθῶς ἠμύνω. Euthyd. 284 Τὴ is an elaboration of the 


t Cf. Eur. Πρ. Awl. 522 ἴ.: 
Agam.: ἐκεῖνο δ᾽ οὐ δέδοικας ob’ ἐσέρχεται; 
Mene.: ὃ μὴ σὺ φράζεις, πῶς ἂν ὑπολάβοιμ᾽ ἔπος; 
2 Perhaps it is fair to compare, for the spirit of this, Aesch. Agam. 1311 f. 


Cass.: ὅμοιος ἀτμὸς ὥσπερ ἐκ τάφου πρέπει. 
Chorus: οὐ Σύριον ἀγλάισμα δώμασιν λέγεις. 


60 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


καὶ yap ov retort: Κακῶς dpa, ἔφη, λέγουσιν, ὦ Κτήσιππε, οἱ ἀγαθοὶ τὰ κακά, 
εἴπερ ὡς ἔχει λέγουσιν. Ναὶ μὰ Δία, ἢ δ᾽ ὅς, σφόδρα γε, τοὺς γοῦν κακοὺς 
ἀνθρώπους: ὧν σύ, ἔαν μοι πείθῃ, εὐλαβήσῃ εἶναι, ἵνα μή σε οἱ ἀγαθοὶ κακῶς 
λέγωσιν. Rather elaborate irony is used by Socrates in Gorg. 497 C, 
Call.: ἐρώτα δὴ ob τὰ σμικρά τε καὶ στενὰ ταῦτα, ἐπείπερ Γοργίᾳ δοκεῖ οὕτως. 
Soc.: ἐυδαίμων εἶ, ὦ Καλλίκλεις, ὅτι τὰ μεγάλα μεμύησαι πρὶν τὰ σμικρά' 
ἐγὼ δ᾽ οὐκ ᾧμην θεμιτὸν εἶναι. So in Hipp. Minor 369 A, Οὐ πάνυ τι 
ἐννοῶ, ὦ Σώκρατες, ὃ λέγεις. Νυνὶ γὰρ ἴσως οὐ χρῇ τῷ μνημονικῷ τεχνήματι 
---δῆλον γὰρ ὅτι οὐκ οἴει δεν. And in Meno 80 BC, to choose from a 
number of instances, is the playful antagonism of epithets: Πανοῦργος εἶ, 
ὦ Μένων, καὶ ὀλίγου ἐξηπάτησάς με. Τί μάλιστα, ὦ Σώκρατες; Τιγγώσκω οὗ 
ἕνεκά με ἤκασας. Tivos δὴ οἴει; Ἵνα σε ἀντεικάσω. The examples cited 
in these last two pages are not paralleled closely in form by sticho- 
mythic verses, but the spirit is exactly the same as in the illustrations 
used in the latter half of the chapter on particles. 


CHAPTER V 
STICHOMYTHIA IN LATER DRAMA 


It is impossible to trace stichomythia in any connected fashion in 
mediaeval Latin drama and its successors, the early comedy and tragedy 
of Italy, France, Spain, and England. An account of its use in these 
times of change is a mere tabulation of plays classified as imitation (or 
translation) or native and modern, with a note of those exceptional 
cases in which imitations of Seneca lack stichomythia, or original plays 
develop a sort of line-dialogue. Only those plays need be mentioned 
which have a bearing, positive or negative, on the subject in hand. 
Hence I must presuppose on the part of the reader a general knowledge 
of the development of drama on the Continent and in England before 
the time of Shakespeare and Racine.* 


A. MEDIAEVAL LATIN DRAMA 


The earliest mediaeval Latin drama of which we know is the work 
of the nun Hrosvitha at Gandersheim shortly before 1000.2 Her six 
Christian plays are imitations of Terence, and in the dialogue, at least, 
are fairly close imitation. As in his rapid dialogue, so here stichomythic 
tricks of style crop out but are unimportant. Mapes, in the twelfth 
century, wrote no drama, but some of the dialogue in his De Nugis 
Curialium is quite stichomythic in effect. Tunison’s dramatic rendering 
of the story of Galo and Sadius (Distinction III, chap. 11), is not over- 
done. The Latin tragedy Ecerinis of Albertino Mussato, published at 
Padua about 1315,5 marked the first step in an Italian revival of classic 
drama, but it was over a century (ca. 1430) before this example was 


tT have had constant reference to A. W. Ward’s History of English Dramatic 
Literature; the Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. V; Manly’s Specimens 
of Pre-Shakespearean Drama, as well as to the standard collections of early English, 
French, and Italian drama. 

2 Ed. Karl Strecker, Leipzig, 1906. 

3 T. Wright in Publications of the Camden Society, No. 50, Oxford, 1850. 

4 Dramatic Traditions of the Middle Ages, pp. 225 fi. 

51 have been unable to see a copy of this unique work, but Symonds (Renaissance 
in Italy, p. 117) speaks of it as ‘‘half narration, half dialogue.’ Evidently it was not 
strictly classical in form. 

61 


62 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


followed by other Italian scholars.t. In church litanies of this period 
there is responsion which is clearly dramatic. This must have been a 
rather important factor in the development of dialogue in native drama, 
at least in England, but it had none of the character of stichomythia.? 
On the secular side, Latin drama in England is represented by the 
University plays of the sixteenth century, on which I shall take the 
liberty of quoting passages and comments from F. S. Boas.3 
Ιεφθάε, by John Christopherson, produced about 1544 at Trinity 

College, ‘‘the only English academic play in Greek known to have sur- 
vived,” is avowedly in imitation of Euripides’ Iphigeneia in Aulis, even 
verbally so in some cases. A few lines from the meeting of father and 
daughter will show the character of the verses: 

led.: χρὴ κατθανεῖν χάριν μάχης ἡμῶν τίνα. 

Θυγ.: πάσης δὲ σαρκὸς οἶμος οὗτος γίνεται. 

led.: φύσει θανεῖν καλὸν, ξίφει μὲν οὐ καλὸν. 
εἴ εἰ θεῷ θάνῃς, οὐ διαφέρει τίνι τρόπῳ. 
led.: αἰσχρὸν σιδήρῳ θνήσκεμεν θηκτῷ κόρη. 
Θυγ.: πάτερ, τί τοῦτο; ---παῖδα σοῦ κτείνειν θέλεις; 


On Richardus Tertius, a chronicle play by Thomas Legge, 1570, “. . .-. 
besides borrowing verbally from Seneca, he can make effective inde- 
pendent use of his technique.”” And he quotes as typical: 


Buck.: Furor brevis pueri statim restinguitur. 
Cates.: At ira praeceps est magis pueri levis. 


Buck.: Quod non tueri salubre consilium potest ? 
Cates.: Quod principi vestrum necem solum vetat. 
Buck.: Pulsabit usque matris ira filium ἢ 

Cates.: Nocere mortuus nihil gnatus potest. 


And more distinctly Senecan: 


Tirell: Annon decet mandata regis exequi ? 
Brakenbury: Numquam decet iubere regem pessima. 
Tirell: Fas est eos vivere quos princeps oderit ? 
Brakenbury: Nefas eos odisse, quos omnes amant. 


* The other Latin tragedies by Italian scholars cited by Symonds (op. cit., 110), 
are also inaccessible to me: Philogenia of Ugolino Pisani; Philodoxius of Alberti; 
Polissena of Leonardo Bruni; Progne of Gregorio Corrado (or Corraro). 

2 Gross (op. cit., p. 105) would find in these the same germs which in Greek lyric 
responsion developed into stichomythia. 


3 University Drama in the Tudor Age, Oxford, 1914. 


STICHOMYTHIA IN LATER DRAMA 63 


On William Gager’s Dido (Christ Church, 1583): ‘“‘The dialogue that 
follows between Aeneas and Achates is added by Gager, and the Senecan 
stichomythia and argumentative antithesis fit incongruously into the 
semi-epic framework of the piece.’’ Note the Senecan quality of this: 


Ach.: Minus eligendum est cum duo occurrunt mala. 

Aen.: Sic est, Achates; at quis hic iudex erit ἢ 

Ach.: Love imperante te tamen iudex latet ἢ 

Aen.: At hospitalis Iupiter prohibet fugam. 

Ach.: Iter institutum cur fugam turpem vocas ἢ 

Aen.: Sic praedicabit fama. Ach.: Sed falsa et levis. 

Aen.: Tamen est timenda levior. Ach.: At superi magis. 

Aen.: At chara Dido est. Ach.: Veniat in mentem tibi 
Ascanius. Aen.: Etiam magna Carthago venit. 

Ach.: Num terra fatis debita Italia est minor ? 


So on the same writer’s Ulysses Redux: ‘Thus the scene that follows 
between Amphinomus and Penelope is of his own invention, and both 
in its use of stichomythia and in its sustained dialectic is markedly 
more Senecan than those drawn from the Odyssey. .... Argument 
flies to and fro between them..... The debate between the two 
wooers is expanded in sententiously Senecan fashion, for which of course 
Homer gives no hint.”? On Laelia (Queen’s College, 1594), a translation 
through the French of Estienne (1543) of the Italian prose comedy 
GI Ingannati, acted at Siena in 1531: “‘He strung up the somewhat 
sprawling prose of his French original into the closer, weightier texture 
of Latin comic verse. And more than once, at critical points, he broke 
an uninterrupted speech into breathless, poignant dialogue.” In this 
he doubtless followed the Italian style, which is very similar. 

Before these plays were produced in England, the Scotchman George 
Buchanan, while professor at Bordeaux, had brought out two plays, 
Baptistes and Jephthes, between the years 1540 and 1545. I have had 
access only to Mitchell’s translation of the latter,t from which I quote 
enough to show the Senecan character of the original. P. 89: 


Jephtha: A heaven-sent law commands us to resign. 
Priest: | What law demands that parents offspring slay ἢ 
Jephtha: That which commands us offered vows to pay. 
Priest: Promise ’twere sin to keep, can God allow? 
Jephtha; The greater sin is not to pay our vow. 

Priest: Suppose thy vow to burn the laws of sires ? 


* Buchanan’s Jephthes, translated by A. Gordon Mitchell (Paisley, 1902). 


64 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


Jephtha: No mortal sane would vow them to the fires. 
Priest: Why? Is it not because the laws condemn ἢ 
Jephtha: It is. 

Priest: Well, Children-slayers—what of them ? 
Jephtha: Not what we do so weighs as why we do. 
Priest: Τὸ God’s commands is not obedience due ἢ 


B. EARLY ITALIAN DRAMA 


The Italians were by far the earliest to revive classical drama, both 
in actual production of Roman comedies and in translation and imitation 
of Greek and Roman tragedy. Toward the end of the fifteenth century 
comedies of Terence and Plautus were produced on the stages of Ferrara, 
Mantua, and Rome under the auspices of the ruling houses. Trans- 
lations of these comedies followed, and then Italian imitations. Nothing 
original resulted, however, either in stichomythia or in any other respect, 
until at about the same time (ca. 1509) Dovizio produced the Calandria 
and Ariosto the Suppositi. The former, a prose working-over of Plautus’ 
Menaechmi, departs decidedly from classical lines as to unity of form 
and subject, but is more symmetrical in its short-speech dialogue than 
the Latin. In short, we find here rather good prose stichomythia. 
Ariosto’s comedy was first written in prose, but we have the second 
edition, turned into verse. It contains little dialogue that could be 
called stichomythic. The comedies (in prose) of Pietro Aretino, written 
in the second quarter of this century, are quite non-classical, but like 
the Calandria contain much prose dialogue which is practically stich- 
omythia (or better, antilabé) in symmetry and spirit. Almost any one 
of the hundred and seven scenes of the Talanta, for instance, would 
show an example. In a typical Terentian comedy, such as the Flora 
(Florence, 1556) of Luigi Alamanni, some of the dialogue is symmetrical 
enough to remind us of Greek or Senecan tragedy,” but most of it is the 
broken dialogue of Roman comedy.’ 

The Italian tragedy of this period is all modeled on Greek or Latin 
originals. Two, at least, are direct translations, Alamanni’s Antigone 


‘In tabulating the early plays in Italian, French, and English I shall have to 
proceed by groups rather than in strict chronological order. And since modern 
comedy has elements borrowed from classical tragedy, traces of stichomythia must 
be considered in early comedies as well as tragedies. 

2Cf. II, 3, Attilio and Ippolito; II, 5, Tonchio and Scarabone; IV, 5, Geri and 
Simone. 

3 Cf. V, 3, 6, 8, where both kinds may be seen. 


STICHOMYTHIA IN LATER DRAMA 65 


(ca. 1530) and Dolce’s Giocasta (ca. 1546). The latter, a translation of 
Euripides’ Phoenissae, was itself turned into English by Gascoigne 
(1566). The stichomythia is very literally rendered by Alamanni, a 
little less exactly by Dolce. For instance, the passage (Phoen. 385-426) 
between Iocasta and Polynices is deliberately broken into irregular 
dialogue so as to give the latter’s story a more important place. When 
Eteocles comes in, the stichomythia is rendered into non-formal dialogue, 
the antilabé into stichomythia. The scene between Creon and Eteocles 
(690-748) is kept, except that the line-dialogue is later in commencing. 
The dialogues between Teiresias and Creon (896-930) and Menoeceus 
and Creon (977-85) are padded with Senecan epigrammatic stichomythia. 
The short antilabé of Antigone and Iocasta (1272 ff.) becomes a lyric 
duet. The quarrel scene of Creon and Antigone (1646-82) is kept faith- 
fully, but the stichomythic form merges into lyric alternation soon 
after Oedipus takes Creon’s place as respondent. These changes indi- 
cate a liking for stichomythia modified by a tendency toward lyric 
measures and the epigrams and messengers’ speeches of Seneca. Broadly 
speaking, these are the characteristics of all the Italian tragedy of this 
century. It is significant, too, that only two plays (Trissino’s Sofonisba, 
1515, and Alamanni’s Antigone) lack the Senecan act and scene divisions, 
even Dolce following the Latin custom.’ 

The other noteworthy Italian tragedies of the time may be briefly 
noted. The Sofonisba just mentioned was written in 1515, published 
in 1524, but apparently not acted until 1562, at Vicenza. On p. τό (of 
the edition in 7| Teatro Italiano Antico) occur thirty-six stichomythic 
lines of question and answer. On p. 29 the slave announces the queen’s 
death to the chorus in typical Greek fashion, twelve lines of stichomythia 
ending in antilabé. On pp. 361. is an irregular dialogue, almost a 
kommos in effect, involving the chorus, Sofonisba, and Herminia, 
which contains much stichomythia and some antilabé. Aside from these 
passages true Greek line-dialogue is not to be found, though the play is 
closely modeled on the Greek. The Rosmunda of Rucellai was written 
in 1516 and acted before the Pope not many years later. Its model was 
the Antigone. In Act I Rosmunda and her nurse have a short “agon,” 


* Cunliffe (The Supposes and Jocasta of Gascoigne, Introduction, p. xxix) believes 
that Dolce used the Latin translation of R. Winter (Basel, 1541). I find no record of 
a Latin translation of Sophocles as early as 1530. 


2 Cunliffe (op. cit., p. xxv) sums up the Senecan influence in Italy thus: ‘‘Seneca’s 
tragedies were, at an early date, imitated at Padua, lectured upon at Florence, printed 
at Ferrara, and acted at Rome.” 


66 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


the former holding that life is an empty thing. In Act III the same 
speakers make use of mocking imitation for a few lines. Both passages 
are quite Greek. In Act IV are four lines of question and answer. 
Aside from this, nothing. In the same writer’s later work, Orestes, 
a tedious imitation of the Jphigeneia in Tauris, there is much weak 
stichomythia. In Acts II and IV antilabé of question and answer con- 
stantly recurs. In Act III Orestes and Pylades argue at length, in very 
tame “agon’’ stichomythia, each for the privilege of saving the other’s life. 
In this same act a kommos, broken by five lines from Pylades, ends in 
distichs. Giraldi Cinthio’s Orbecche, acted in 1541 at Ferrara, is cited 
by Cunliffe as “the model of later Italian drama.” It enjoyed great 
popularity though it is not particularly original, Giraldi himself confessing 
indebtedness to Trissino on the one hand and Seneca on the other. In 
V, 2, Sulmone gives Orbecche the bloody gift of her lover’s hand and 
head in a sort of stichomythia in which her part is largely exclamation 
and appeal. There is an evident working from kommos to retort. So 
in Speron Sperone’s Canace, of about this period, Eolo and Consigliero 
approach stichomythia twice. Yet both plays copy the other Senecan 
devices throughout. The Edippo (1565) of Andrea dell’ Anguillara is 
an imitation of Sophocles in matter, of Seneca inform. Like the Orbecche 
and the Canace, it contains only occasional groups of three or four lines 
‘of stichomythia and, in the end of the fourth act, a kommos. 

In these eight tragedies we see a gradual decrease in the use of 
stichomythia with no corresponding falling off from the classical tradi- 
tion in other respects. On the other hand, Italian comedy of this century 
developed an effective line-dialogue which approached that of Greek 
tragedy in symmetry without losing the vivacity of Latin comedy 
dialogue. 


C. EARLY FRENCH DRAMA 


There is no place here for discussion of the influence of the Italian 
classical spirit on French literature of the sixteenth century, but one 
link, at least, interests us. Hauvette' has told the interesting story of 
Alamanni, the exiled Italian poet who became at the court of Francis II 
a mediocre diplomat but a notable literary figure. His classical drama, 
the Antigone, and his semi-classical Flora, of which mention has been 
made above, represent but two of the many literary forms in which he 
expressed himself. None of his work is great, but all is smooth and 
graceful and, in the conventional sense, classical. Such a man must 


‘Hauvette, Luigi Alamanni (Paris, 1903). 


STICHOMYTHIA IN LATER DRAMA 67 


have exerted considerable influence, directly or indirectly, on the young 
men who, in 1549, formed the “Pleiad””* with avowed intention of re- 
viving the classics in France. Ronsard himself became another and 
greater Alamanni, but he left to Estienne Jodelle the field of classical 
drama, although he himself translated (ca. 1550) the Plutus of 
Aristophanes. 

Jodelle (1532-73) wrote but three plays. One was a comedy, 
L’Eugéne (1552), with plenty of short-speech dialogue and stichomythic 
spirit, but no formal stichomythia. It followed classical models, how- 
ever, more closely than did the Italian comedies of the previous half- 
century. On the same day with this, the twenty-year-old poet brought 
out his Cléopétre, the first French classical tragedy. There is a stilted 
symmetry throughout the play, and it is more Senecan—ghost and all— 
than Greek or Italian. In Act I (there are no scene divisions) the author 
uses a non-classical device often copied by Hardy and others, viz., 
Cleopatra in formal stichomythia, with Eras and Charmium alternating 
as respondents. In every case the words and form of Cleopatra’s phrase 
are followed closely, but not in mockery. A long speech by Cleopatra 
is followed by broken dialogue with speeches varying in length from a 
third of a line to a line and two-thirds. This attempt to reproduce 
natural dialogue falls far below the plane of the later work of Sophocles, 
but shows the same desire to break up rigid symmetry. In Act ΠῚ 
Seleuque engages the chorus in sixteen lines of stichomythia in more 
Euripidean style, but with some imitation of form. Jodelle’s third 
play, Didon se Sacrifiant (15 58), is ponderous, in Senecan style. Nine 
speeches and a choral song make up ActI. Act II comprises ten speeches 
and a twenty-five line stichomythia between Aeneas and the chorus, 
beginning with antilabé, all quite Senecan in tone. In Act III, Achates 
takes the place of the chorus in urging the reluctant Aeneas in fourteen 
lines of stichomythia introduced as before. 

Jodelle and all his successors used the rhymed Alexandrine couplet. 
The Italians of this century had used unrhymed verse. Obviously, 
rhymed couplets produce more striking line-dialogue, giving much the 
same effect as catchwords. We should suppose that their introduction 
would tend to increase the amount of stichomythia, because of its 
effectiveness. Apparently this tendency was balanced by the disposition 
of all the French classical school to use long speeches and avoid choppy 


τ [bid., XVI, 442 ff., 457. 
2 French translations had already been made of Sophocles’ Antigone and Electra 
and the Hecuba of Euripides (Ward in Encyclopaedia Britannica). 


68 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


dialogue, for what little change is noticeable is toward a decrease. But 
it is worth noting that these rhymed couplets give an impression of 
similarity between French and Senecan stichomythia even when they 
are unlike in subject-matter and style. 

Passing by less important imitators, we come to Robert Garnier 
(1545-1601), in whom, says Ward, “French tragedy reached the greatest 
height in nobility and dignity of style, as well as in the exhibition of 
dramatic passion, to which it attained before Corneille.” He produced 
seven tragedies and one tragi-comedy in strictly classical style. In 
fact, his Antigone is largely a translation of the unfinished Phoenissae of 
Seneca and the Antigone of Sophocles; his La Troade is a fusion of the 
Hecuba of Euripides and the Troades of Seneca; and his Hippolyte is a 
translation of Seneca’s Phaedra. The other plays have plots taken from 
Roman history or from Assyrian history with classic suggestions. His 
first play, Porcie, was published in 1568, the last about 1585. His 
Cornélie (1574) was translated in 1594 by Kyd,* author of The Spanish 
Tragedy. Garnier’s stichomythia is nearer Seneca’s than is that of any 
other dramatist of the century. While in some passages he translates 
Seneca literally,? he prefers as a rule to expand the concise Latin verses 
or to be original in phrasing, borrowing only form and spirit. Even 
when he is translating from Euripides or Sophocles he introduces, 
through his customary padding of the original, the epigrammatic tone, 
the startling phrase, that mark him as Senecan at heart. A casual 
reading of the stichomythic parts in, say, the fourth act of his Antigone 
gives one the impression that they are translation or imitation of Seneca, 
whereas the whole act is a fair translation of Sophocles. In the matter 
of devices Garnier outdid his Latin master, for he used, as much as the 
latter, catchwords and gnomic phrases, and in addition brought to its 
extreme height the trick of form imitation, not only in taunt, but in 
ordinary argument. Two illustrations will be enough: 


Les Juives, 679 fi.: 


La Royne: I1n’est malheur si grand que l’espoir n’adoucisse. 
Amital: Il n’est malheur si grand que l’espoir ne nourisse. 


* Dodsley-Hazlitt, Vol. V. 


2 Porcie, 850-60, is translation of Thyestes 204 ff. and Octavia 440 ff. Les Juives, 
III, 1 (902 ff.), and M. Antoine, 1500 ff., are imitations of the same passages. In 
Antigone, I, 1, and Les Juives, ΤΙ, 3, Garnier goes out of his way to produce Senecan 
stichomythia. 

3Cf. Porcie, 589 ff., 851 ff., 1876 ff.; Cornelie, 510 f., 1417 ff., 1447 f.; M. 
Antoine, 467 f., 549 ff., 1500 ff.; Hippolyte, 509 fi., 553 f., 1685 f.; La Troade, 365 ff.; 
Antigone, 121 ff., 1908 f.; Les Juives, 903 ff.; Bradamante, 262 f. 


—— δια 


STICHOMYTHIA IN LATER DRAMA 69 


La Royne: Voire mais un chacun l’espérance recoit. 


Amital: Voire mais un chacun l|’espérance decoit. 
La Royne: Lamort ne manque point, elle vient trop hastive. 
Amital: La mort aux affligez vient toujours trop tardive. 


Antigone 1864 ff. (in translation from Soph. Antig. 497 ff.): 


Antigone: Je mourray contre droict pour chose glorieuse. 


Creon: Vous mourrez justement comme une audacieuse. 
Antigone: Il n’est celuy qui n’eust commis semblable faict. 
Creon: I n’est celuy pourtant d’entre tous qui leait faict. 


Garnier was also fond of the Yankee trick of answering question with 
question,’ a distinctly non-classical device. Finally, it is curious to 
note that in spite of Seneca’s liking for antilabé, Garnier uses it (for 
more than a line or two) only once, and that time in his one tragi-comedy, 
Bradamante (1582). 

The most prolific dramatist of this period was Alexandre Hardy 
(ca. 1570-1630), from whom we have twelve tragedies, fourteen tragi- 
comedies, and five pastorales. He combined classic, Spanish, and 
Italian models, but rather as the artisan than as the artist. His plays 
are swift of movement both in plot and in dialogue, but hastily done and 
unpolished. He has less formal stichomythia and more short-speech 
dialogue than Garnier, but is especially fond of dialogue in couplets. 
His pastorales follow the Italian comedies in an abundant use 
of lively stichomythia, most often of single lines. A glance at four 
of his more noteworthy plays will illustrate these generalizations. La 
Mort de Daire: distichomythia begun and quickly dropped in I, 2; 
III, τὶ V, 1. Didon se Sacrifiant (cf. Jodelle’s): II, 2, eight lines of 
Senecan stichomythia; II, 3, four lines, question and answer; III, 1, 
Dido and Aeneas in a quarrel scene just fitted for stichomythia, but 
none of the formal type used; IV, 2, stichomythia and couplets mixed; 
V, 1, Euripidean kommos, chorus and Barca. Mariamne: I, 1 (after 
prologue by ghost of Aristobulus), Herod and Pherore in a dialogue 
slightly irregular but corresponding in every other way to Senecan 
stichomythia; later Herod, Pherore, Herod, Salome, a device often used 
by Hardy, but borrowed from Jodelle; II, 1, Nurse and Mariamne, four 
lines; IV, 2, Herod and Mariamne twice briefly in a long broken dialogue. 
La Mort d’Alexandre: distichomythia at some length in I, 2; II, 2; V, 1, 
and a few typical Senecan lines in V, 2. 

Pierre Corneille (1606-84) followed classic models except in Le Cid 
(1636), but his use of stichomythia gives little suggestion of this. In 


* Cf. Hippolyte, 501 f., 8290-32; La Troade, 839 f.; Antigone, 121 f., 1256 f., 1908 f. 


7O STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


his first play, Mélite (1629), and in his second, Clitandre (1632), we find 
about as much stichomythia as in the average comedy of Shakespeare. 
In Le Cid there is still less, but there is more broken-line speech than 
the English poet would allow. In Horace (1640) there is least of all, in 
Cinna (1640) a number of short Senecan passages, and in Pol-yeucte 
(1641) as much Senecan stichomythia as in a play of Garnier’s. Of 
his last plays, Tite et Bérénice (1672) has twenty lines in all: couplets 
(771-74), couplets changing to single-line dialogue (1215-22), real 
stichomythia, epigrammatic and with interruption (1708-17). Finally, 
in Suréna (1674) there is no actual stichomythia, but a constant use of 
catchwords between speakers. The conclusion, if any may be drawn, is 
that Corneille did not regard stichomythia as a vital part of classic 
(i.e., Senecan) drama, but used it or its devices most where he was least 
original. 

Racine (1679-99) comes at the very end of a period of adherence to 
Aristotle and the classics, so that his influence on later writers is, for 
our purpose at least, negligible. It is interesting to note, however, that 
he succeeded better than has ever anyone else in combining Seneca, 
Euripides, and the taste of his own time in plot, form, and style. But 
the modern influence was so strong that formal stichomythia was 
practically eliminated from his plays. Note, e.g., [phigénie, I, and 
III, 1, built up from long stichomythic passages in Euripides; or con- 
trast Phédre with either the Phaedra of Seneca or the Hippolytus of 
Euripides. This is not a neglect of stichomythia but obviously unwilling- 
ness to use it. 

Moliére’s work, however, cannot be dismissed so summarily, 
although, as is natural in comedy, there is more short-speech dialogue 
than formal stichomythia. In Le Misanthrope (1666) we find a number of 
brief line-dialogues' of no special importance except that they are in the 
spirit of Euripides, and not a servile imitation of Seneca or Plautus. 
In Tartuffe (1664) are pairs of verses? in the short-speech dialogue 
and, in V, 3, a hint at satire on Seneca in definite statements falling flat 
against gnomic remarks, part of the passage stichomythic in form. In 
Les Femmes Savantes (1672) there is more than in the earlier plays, 
notably in III, 2, much single-line comment on Trissotin’s poem, like a 
kommos in iambics; III, 3, 969-86, Trissotin and Vadius heaping 
compliments on each other; III, 3, 1005-17, same speakers in gradually 
increasing anger; IV, 3, 1284-1312, rather Senecan in tone; and finally 


1Vss. 1-5, 184 ff., 420-34, 495-96, 503-7, 822 ff., 1327-32, 1609-22, 1662-68. 
2Vss. 463 ff.; II, 3, especially 619 ff., 698 ff. 


STICHOMYTHIA IN LATER DRAMA γι 


in V, 3, the notary scene, much mocking of form, usually in single lines.* 
In the prose comedy Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670), III, 9, Cléonte 
and his lackey, Covielle, lament the fickleness of their respective loves 
in the burlesque manner of Acharnians 1097 ff. In Aristophanes, how- 
ever, Dicaeopolis intends his imitations to be taunts, in Moliére, Covielle 
is an innocent agent of the burlesque. 


D. EARLY ENGLISH DRAMA 


The miracle or mystery plays? of the twelfth century and after were 
the earliest form of native English drama. They owe nothing to foreign 
influences, and are removed from what we know as the classic drama, 
not only in fact, but in motive and spirit as well. Or, rather, they 
represent a dramatic development of an earlier stage than anything we 
have left in Greek. We are not surprised, then, to find no stichomythia 
and no tendency toward it except perhaps in the symmetrical dialogue 
of Noah and his wife in the Coventry Plays. Even in such passages there 
is no attempt at conciseness of expression, which is a necessary factor in 
stichomythia. 

The morality plays of the sixteenth century,3 now more or less 
familiar to all through the popularizing of Everyman, trace their origin 
in part to the Continent, but if classical traditions ever influenced them, 
that influence was lost before they reached England. The primitive 
style and spirit of the miracle plays is gone, but the moralities are still 
a native drama. From the standpoint of stichomythia they fall into 
three classes, of which two may be dismissed with a mention. (a) Lusty 
Juventus, Mundus et Infans, Everyman, Interlude of Youth, The Four 
Elements, and others of this type show none. (ὁ) Impatient Poverty, 
Nice Wanton, Hyckescorner, and in fact a majority of those I have seen, 
show traces of a native growth of line-dialogue, but only traces. (c) Three 
plays show enough stichomythia to deserve separate classification: John 
Bale’s Kynge Johan (date uncertain, but ca. 1548), and, by unknown 

t Also vss. 323 ff. (by interruption), 334 ff., 385-92 (in pairs), 435 ff.; III, 1, 
especially 723 ff., 1019-26, 1041 ff., 1086-94, 1417-26, 1450 ff. 

Manly, Specimens of Pre-Shakespearian Drama, Vol. I, edits representative 


plays. A convenient edition with accurate text is the Everyman and Eight Miracle 
Plays in the “Everyman Series.” 


3 For these and all early English plays I have used the editions in Dodsley-Hazlitt, 
Old English Plays, and the publications of the Early English Drama Society, as well 
as Gayley’s Representative English Comedies and Manly’s Specimens, etc. 


4 Published by the Early English Drama Society, ed. J. S. Farmer. 


72 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


authors, History of Jacob and Esau (ca. 1558) and Marriage of Wit and 
Science (1570). Incidentally these three show distinct phases or develop- 
ments of the morality plays. 

Kynge Johan, though in morality form, is a play directed at, and 
attracting publicity to, existing evils... At some point in almost every 
dialogue stichomythic form is used for four, six, or ten lines, in all about 
a hundred lines coming under this head. In addition, three speakers 
often alternate in more or less regular line-dialogue. Both style and 
subject-matter, not to speak of the early date, preclude the chance of 
this being an imitation of Plautus, Seneca, or Euripides. Here, as in its 
classical occurrences, the motives for its use were, evidently, a recogni- 
tion of the fitness of stichomythia for quarrel scenes, a pleasure in its 
symmetry, and an appreciation of the opportunities it affords for spark- 
ling dialogue through the devices of catchwords, subtle connections, and 
open sarcasm. One illustration must suffice: 


Sedycion: Ye are well content that bishops continue still ? 

2 RS We are so indeed, if they their duty fulfil. 

Sedycion: Nay then, good enough, your authority and power 

Shall pass as they will; they have sauce both sweet 

and sour. 

Ki. Jes What meanest thou by that ? Show me thy intent this 
hour. 

Sedycion: They are God’s vicars, they can both save and loose. 

1 aM {ι- Ah! thy meaning is, they may a prince depose. 

Sedycion: By the rood! they may; and that will appear by you. 

Hes Tic By the help of God we shall see to that well enou’. 

Sedycion: Nay, ye cannot, though ye had Argus eyes. 


Note that the two lines which Sedycion speaks are both rhymed with 
the following line, as if to show that they take the place of one. The 
King’s question, ‘“‘What meanest,” etc., is a true Greek stop-gap verse, 
though probably not so intended. Greek also is Sedycion’s picking up 
‘see’? and making much of it in his “‘ Argus eyes”’ phrase. 

The History of Jacob and Esau is really not a morality play at all, 
but a pastoral comedy grown out of a miracle play.4 A feeling for sym- 


* Ward, History of English Dramatic Literature, 1, 186: “ ... . its theme, which 
was at once (in a sense) religious and national, and which accordingly places the work 
midway between the early religious and the active beginnings of our national historical 
drama.”’ 

2Farmer’s ed., p. 183. 3 Dodsley-Hazlitt, IT, 185 ff. 

4 Collier, English Dramatic Poetry, 11, 172 ff., discusses this play at some length. 


STICHOMYTHIA IN LATER DRAMA 73 


metry is manifest through its whole structure, yet it is the symmetry 
of a poet and not of an artisan. Regularly at the beginning of scenes 
this crystallizes into polite stichomythia.' The petty tiffs between Esau 
and Ragan always contain a few lines.?- On pp. 204 f. Rebecca regularly 
interrupts Isaac’s arguments for Esau. Sometimes her remarks are 
pure asides, nowhere do they change Isaac’s course of thought. On 
pp. 206f., after a typically Greek ending of the altercation, Mido 
characterizes the repartee: 


Ye could not speak anything unto her so thick, 
But she had her answer as ready and as quick. 


At p. 215 is a comic matching of wits in absurd imitation of Esau; on 
pp. 218 ff. there is more use of asides; on pp. 226 ff. there is polite 
stichomythia, and again (but more irregular) on pp. 232-33, where much 
is made of little by this Euripidean device; on pp. 248 ff. Isaac and 
Esau lament their woes responsively; on pp. 252 ff. there is a whole 
scene in stichomythia except for Esau’s one long speech. It will be seen 
that in this one play occur most of the Greek stichomythic usages, but 
none of the epigrammatic, gnomic lines of Senecan dialogue. ‘Subtlety 
is achieved, but not with effort. In fact it is when alert, sharp-witted 
Mido is involved that the stichomythia is best. Agonistic scenes are 
in the majority, though polite stichomythia is used as well. And an 
artistic symmetry, to repeat my opening statement, pervades and 
motivates the whole. 

The Marriage of Wit and Science; though latest of the three plays, 
adheres most closely to the morality type, except that it is divided 
into acts and scenes. Here, as in Kynge Johan, the line-dialogue is more 
distinctly in groups, the single lines coming in the midst of irregular 
dialogue. There is little really agonistic dialogue, the nearest to it 
being the fool’s play of pp. 322 f. or 334f., the rude passage-at-arms 
between Wit and Reason, pp. 351 f., or the mocking imitation of form, 
p- 366. On pp. 346-47 the whole scene in which Will reports progress 
to Wit is in question-and-answer stichomythia. All the rest is rather 
Senecan in tone, perhaps in somewhat weak imitation (Seneca was 
translated into English between 1559 and 1581, and had been read in 
Latin for half a century), more likely as a result of the didactic, gnomic 
quality of the play, though any morality play might, on this ground, 


TIP Ds το, 290; 222, 2412, δῖΟ: 
2 Pprott.) τὸῦ ἢ, 200 ἵ-, 218 f., etc. 
3 Dodsley-Hazlitt, II, 324 ff. 


74 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


be expected to furnish the same sort of dialogue. One specimen of 
distichs will illustrate: 


Wit: Τί cunning be the key and well of wor(1)dly bliss 
Me-thinketh God might at the first as well endu all with this. 
Nature: As cunning is the key of bliss, so is it worthy praise: 
The worthiest things are won with pain in tract of time always. 
Wit: — And yet right worthy things there are, you will confess, I trow, 
Which notwithstanding at our birth God doth on us bestow. 
Nature: There are; but such as unto you, that have the great to name 
I rather that bestow, than win thereby immortal fame. 
Wit: Fain would I learn what harm or detriment ensued 
Τ any man were at his birth with these good gifts endowed. 


With this compare a bit of native comedy: 


Wit: Welcome to me, my Will, what service canst thou do ? 
Will: All things forsooth, sir, when me list, and more too. 

Wit: But whether wilt thou list when I shall list, I trow ἢ 
Will: Trust not to that; peradventure yea, peradventure no. 
Wit: When I have need of thee, thou wilt not serve me so. 
Will: If ye bid me run, perhaps I will go. 

Wit: Cock’s soul, this is a boy for the nonce amongst twenty mo! 
Will: I am plain, I tell you, at a word and a blow. 


The influence of the moralities is evident in the developing forms of 
both comedy and tragedy, but unless this is the paramount influence 
in a play, no mention of it need be made hereafter. English comedy 
was earlier in its growth than tragedy, largely because comedy came 
from native elements in part, while even the earliest tragedy shows 
indebtedness to Seneca. As early as 1533 John Heywood (not Thomas, 
who was nearly a century later) wrote the farce-comedy Johan Johan. 
This has considerable single-line “ Billingsgate’”’ among the three actors. 
No subtlety is involved, merely a heaping up of epithets. There is 
antilabé of a sort in vss. 628-34, Tyb teasing Johan, Less than ten 
years later appeared Ralph Roister Doister,4 by the schoolmaster Nicholas 
Udall, a comedy in loose imitation of the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus. 
The dialogue is very similar to that of Plautus. There is the same half- 

2 'Pp. 320 'f. 2Pp. 332 f. 

3 Gayley, Representative English Comedies. 

4 Dodsley-Hazlitt, III, 53 ff.; also in Gayley and Manly. Udall’s relation to the 
classics is discussed by Fliigel, ap. Gayley, p. 98. This was the first important English 
comedy, Heywood’s being little more than clowning. 


STICHOMYTHIA IN LATER DRAMA 75 


natural, half-artificial irregularity, the same effect of disconnection due 
to absence of the connective words so necessary in Greek, the same 
breaking of a line into mere fragments in passages of excitement. But 
in the English comedy the groups of balanced whole lines are a little 
longer and more frequent. There is little subtlety—the humor is too 
broad for that—but much “‘Sophoclean irony”’ of a sort in the dialogues 
where his companions draw out Roister Doister. In IV, 7, he and 
Merygreke have an extended line-dialogue which pivots on the word 
“stomach,” and is crudely reminiscent (though certainly no imitation) 
of the Greek scenes in which a catchword or idea is harped upon. 

Jack Jugler and Gammer Gurton’s Nedle were produced at about 
the same time (ca. 1560), but are quite different in character. The 
former is an adaptation from Plautus’ Amphitryo on the lines of a mor- 
ality play. Alternating lines—they can hardly be called stichomythia— 
occur, vss. 308 ff., by interruption; 314-17, four lines of fencing; 334 ff. 
and 373 ff. in mild quarrel; 640-45, and 750-51. Of the Plautine 
stichomythia or, rather, broken-line dialogue, there is not a trace. The 
other play is native in plot, material, and dialect, ‘the sole surviving 
example of vernacular college comedy,” and was influenced by Roman 
comedy only as regards general form. It was produced at Cambridge,? 
as were many of the plays of this period, since the college and the court 
were really the only “public” stage of the time. As the title might 
suggest, this is rather broad farce, whose dialogue is too much broken 
up to suggest stichomythia. Yet at the very end, V, 2, 293 ff., where 
Hodge finds the needle sticking in himself, antilabé and stichomythia 
are used, producing an effect like an Aristophanic parody of a “‘recog- 
nition scene”’ in the tragedians. 

After Gammer Gurton’s Nedle came a period when comedy was 
thought little of and tragedy came into popular favor, but after 1580 
comedy was revived and given a new dress. John Lyly, of Euphues 
fame, wrote several light plays in more or less metrical prose, and George 
Peele produced at court in 1584 his Arraignment of Paris. This latter, 
which is really a pastoral poem in dramatic form, reminds us in its 
symmetry (but in that alone) of Jacob and Esau. This symmetry 
involves some excellent dialogue in lines, half-lines, and distichs; yet 
we must feel in reading them a lack of the agonistic spirit of Greek 
drama, of the delight in sharp retort and subtle matching of wits. In 


τ᾿ Dodsley-Hazlitt, II, 103 ff.; III, 163 ff. 
2 By one Stevenson, not Bishop Still. Cf. Bradley, ap. Gayley, pp. 197 ff. 


76 


STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


short, they are borrowed, not from classical drama, but from the amoe- 
bean poetry of Theocritus or Vergil. One passage will make this clear: 


Mercury: 
Oenone: 

Mercury: 
Mercury: 
Mercury: 
Mercury: 
Mercury: 
Mercury: 
Mercury: 
Mercury: 
Mercury: 


Mercury: 


Oenone: 


Mercury: 


Good day, fair maid, weary belike with following of your game, 

I wish thee cunning, at thy will, to spare or strike the same. 

I thank you sir; my game is quick and rids a length of ground, 
And yet I am deceived, or else ’a had a deadly wound. 

Your hand perhaps did swerve awry. Oenone: Or else it was my 


heart. 

Then sure ’a plied his footmanship. Oenone: ’A played a ranging 
part. ‘ 

You should have given a deeper wound. Oe¢none: I could not that 
for pity. 


You should have eyed him better, then. Oenone: Blind love was 
not so witty. 
Why, tell me, sweet, are you in love? O¢enone: Or would I were 


not so. 

Ye mean because ’a does ye wrong? Oe6cnone: Perdy, the more 
my woe. 

Why, mean ye Love or him ye loved? Ocenone: Well may I mean 
them both. 


Is Love to blame? Ocnone: The Queen of Love hath made him 
false his troth. 

Mean ye indeed the Queen of Love? Oenone: Even wanton 
Cupid’s dame. 

Why, was thy love so lovely, then? Ocnone: His beauty hight his 


shame; 

The fairest shepherd on our green. Mercury: Is he a shepherd, 
then ? 

And sometime kept a bleating flock. Mercury: Enough, this is 
the man. 


Where wons he, then? Oecenone: About these woods, far from the 
poplar tree. 

What poplar mean ye? O6cnone: Witness of the vows ’twixt him 
and me.? 

[Cyclops is present but says nothing, like another Pylades.] 


Of Lyly’s work, Alexander and Campaspe (1584) is typical. Because 
of its prose form its dialogue cannot at any point be called stichomythia, 
yet it approaches it in spirit and even at times in symmetry. Especially 
is this true of the contests in wit of his minor characters, which, like 
Greek agonistic passages, are wholly made up of subtle, swift, and 
balanced retort, catching up word or thought of the opponent. Lyly’s 


t Bullen, I, 39 ff.; ΠῚ, 1. 


STICHOMYTHIA IN LATER DRAMA aad 


influence in this regard on dialogue in drama, and especially in Shake- 
speare, is well summed up by Churton Collins... In a measure we may 
call this dialogue form the modern equivalent for stichomythia, though 
it soon became limited to comedy passages. 

Perhaps the most notable thing in this brief review of early English 
comedy is the slight extent of classical influence. In tragedy the story 
is quite different. Here the situation is pretty well indicated in Cunliffe’s 
Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy, in which he is compelled to 
include all early English tragedy. In the minor point of stichomythia 
the Senecan influence is not nearly so sweeping, though it is always he 
and never the Greeks who furnished the models for what line-dialogue 
does occur. The earliest real tragedy, Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex 
(1561), by Norton and Sackville, is strongly Senecan in spirit and plot 
but contains no stichomythia, nor anything like it, except at the very 
beginning in the polite symmetry of a formal introduction to the story. 
Somewhere between 1563 and 1575 appeared Appius and Virginia, 
author unknown, which is a development of the morality with classical 
infusion. It contains no stichomythia. The Cambyses (1569) of Thomas 
Preston also has morality elements and comic parts as well. Its only 
approach to stichomythia is in these latter passages (pp. 181 ff.), among 
Meretrix, Snuff, Huff, Ruff, and Ambidexter, the Vice. Damon and 
Pithias? (ca. 1571), a ‘“‘tragical comedy”’ by Richard Edwards, furnishes 
(p. 50) an actual, though not avowed, translation of Seneca’s Octavia 
455-57, ἃ passage much admired and copied by French and English 
dramatists of the periods In addition, we find on p. 85 a dialogue on 
friendship in true Senecan tone, and on pp. 48 and 55 stichomythia in a 
lengthened verse irregularly rhymed, which gives much the same effect 
as the witty prose dialogue introduced ten years later by Lyly.4 


τ Essays and Studies (1895), p. 190: “The influence of Lyly on the development 
of the drama was undoubtedly considerable. He set the fashion of clothing comedy 
in prose, and he formulated genteel and artificial, as distinguished from familiar and 
realistic, dialogue. To his example are no doubt to be traced the point, vivacity, 
wit, and grace which begins to be conspicuously affected in the style of comedy toward 
the close of the sixteenth century. He gave the first models for that elaborate word- 
play, for that keen, terse interchange of witty badinage, in which Shakespeare so 
much delights to engage his Benedicts and his Beatrices, his Touchstones and his 
Launcelots.”’ Baker, ap. Gayley: “This Socratic method foreshadows Shakespeare’s 
clowns and pages.” 


2 Dodsley-Hazlitt, IV. 
3 Cf. Cunliffe, op. cit., p. 57, and my own notes on pp. 68 and 79. 
4P. 76 and note 1 above. 


78 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


Nowhere is the influence of Seneca better shown than in the Mis- 
Sortunes of Arthur, produced by Hughes in 1587. The plot is, of course, 
a native English parallel to Seneca’s plots, but, as Cunliffe has shown," 
the author has cleverly worked in lines and whole passages from all the 
plays of Seneca until his own play is nearly half translation. It is 
scarcely less closely Senecan than the English translation of that writer 
that had been published in 1581, or than the plays of Garnier, and so 
must be thrown out of court as evidence of development in English 
drama. In the following year Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy was acted. In its 
ghost, its abundance of murders, and its generally melodramatic style 
it was a direct imitation of the Latin, but its stichomythia, of which it 
has considerable, shows in at least two respects modifications probably 
borrowed from Garnier. Imitation of form, not wholly in taunt, is 
affected, and in the scene (II, 4) between Bellimperia and Horatio 
rhymed couplets are used instead of blank verse. Kyd did, indeed, a 
few years later, translate Garnier’s Cornélie rather literally into English. 
The anonymous Jeronimo, Part 1,? is very likely also Kyd’s work. It 
contains less formal stichomythia than the Spanish Tragedy, but what 
is used is Senecan. In a measure the passage (pp. 363 f.) where the 
Spanish ambassador at the Portuguese court offers defiance is reminiscent 
of the like passage in Aeschylus’ Sup plices. 

Loudon’s Tancred and Gismundas (1591 or 1592) is strictly classical 
in all ways, and has stichomythia of the regular Senecan style in I, 3; 
II, 2; IV, 3, 4; V, 2 (members of chorus alternating in response to 
Gismunda), and V, 3 (something like the end of the Hercules Furens 
of Euripides). Soliman and Perseda4 (ca. 1590) departs somewhat from 
the type. On pp. 323-24 is a most artificial but ingenious series of dis- 
tichs, the first line of each pair quoting or subtly altering the last of the 
previous pair. On p. 346 we find mocking imitation of form. On p. 365 
is a stichomythia in fair Greek styles I have spoken above of George 


τ Op. cit., Appendix I. 3Ibid., Vol. VII. 
? Dodsley-Hazlitt, IV, 348 ff. 4 Ibid., IV, 255 ff. 


5 Perseda: At whose entreaty is this parley sounded ἢ 
Soliman: At our entreaty: therefore yield the town. 
Perseda: Why, what art thou, that boldly bidd’st me yield? 
Soliman: Great Soliman, lord of all the world. 

Perseda: Thou art not lord of all: Rhodes is not thine. 
Soliman: It was and shall be, mauger who says no. 
Perseda: I, that say no, will never see it thine. 

Soliman: Why, what art thou, that dar’st resist my force? 


I suspect that if this were Greek our emendators would “restore” the last line to its 
place after the third line quoted! 


STICHOMYTHIA IN LATER DRAMA 79 


Peele’s comedy, The Arraignment of Paris. Equally original is his 
chronicle play, Edward I (1593, probably before Richard III). In this 
curiously constructed play—it has no acts and little coherence—there 
are two stichomythic passages (scenes 5 and 21) paraphrasing Seneca, 
abruptly introduced and as abruptly dropped, and no trace of such 
dialogue elsewhere. 

In Marlowe’s tragedies there is practically no stichomythia. He 
was too much interested in bombastic, oratorical speech to spend time 
working out subtleties of thought. Marston, with all his Senecan tend- 
encies, made no use of stichomythia except, absurdly enough, to intro- 
duce into Antonio’s Revenge, ΤΙ, 1, a paraphrase of those favorite passages 
from Seneca’s Octavia and Thyestes1 Robert Greene has more line- 
dialogue and balanced speeches in James the Fourth (published post- 
humously, 1598) than in all his other extant plays. Three short 
quotations show stichomythia borrowed from native comedy, from pas- 
toral comedy, and from Seneca: 

Hil; 2: 
Purveyor: Sirrah, I must needes have your maister’s horses: 
The King cannot be unserved. 
Andrew: Sirrah, you must needes go without them, 
Because my maister must be served. 
Purveyor: Why, I am the King’s purveyer, 
And I tell thee, I will have them. 
Andrew: Iam Ateukin’s servant, Signior Andrew, 
And I say thou shalt not have them. 
Purveyor: Heeres my ticket; denie it if thou darst. 
Andrew: There is the stable; fetch them out if thou darst. 
Purveyor: Sirrah, sirrah, tame your tongue, least I make you. 
Andrew: Sirrah, sirrah, hold your hand, least I bum you. 


IV, 4: 
= iy Nano: Say, madame, will you have your Nano sing? 
Dorothea: Of woe, good boy, but of no other thing. 
Nano: What if I sing of Fancie? Will it please ? 
Dorothea: To such as hope successe, such noats breede ease. 
Nano: What if I sing, like Damon, to my sheepe? 
Dorothea: Like Phillis, I will sit me doune to weepe. 
na: 
Ida: Better than live unchaste, to live in grave. 
Ateukin: He shall erect your state and wed you well. 
Ida: But can his warrant keep my soule from hell ? 


Ateukin: He will inforce, if you resist his sute. 


Cunliffe, op. cit., p. 101; above, p. 77 and note. 


80 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


E. SHAKESPEARE 


No thesis can be proved nor moral drawn from Shakespeare’s rather 
irregular use of stichomythia. The earlier plays show more such dialogue 
than the later ones, of course, but the decrease is not regular. Richard III 
and Love’s Labour’s Lost are in a class by themselves. Richard II and 
Henry VI, First and Third Parts, come next, Henry VI, Second Part, 
and Two Gentlemen of Verona next, while Titus Andronicus, Romeo and 
Juliet, and the Comedy of Errors have very little. Yet these all date 
from 1591 to 1593. From the period 1594-1600 King John, Henry IV, 
Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Taming of the Shrew, 
Merry Wives of Windsor, and Twelfth Night have some little stichomythia; 
Henry V, All’s Well That Ends Well, Much Ado about Nothing, and As 
You Like It have practically none. Of the plays from 1601 on a few 
scattered passages, usually containing only two or four lines, are found 
in Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, King Lear, 
Timon of Athens (almost like a comedy in its prose dialogue), Antony 
and Cleopatra, and Cymbeline; there is no stichomythia in Macbeth, 
Pericles, Coriolanus, Measure for Measure, The Tempest, or The Winter’s 
Tale. Romeo and Juliet in 1592 had no more stichomythia than Antony 
and Cleopatra in 1608, but the latter was in this respect above the 
average of its chronological group and the former was well below the 
average of its period. 

The dialogue of Love’s Labour’s Lost (1591) shows clearly the influence 
of Lyly (cf. p. 77, n. 1). It is for the most part in prose, yet much of it 
gives surprisingly well the effect of Greek verse stichomythia. All that 
it lacks is symmetry of structure; the other motives, subtlety, spirit 
of conflict, conciseness, are all there. The play contains a little stich- 
omythia in verse, more perhaps than any other of Shakespeare’s come- 
dies, for even in those more dignified comedies where the verse form 
predominates play of wit was left to the prose parts. Act V, scene 2, 
of Love’s Labour’s Lost, a locus classicus for puns, is one of the few 
exceptions to the rule. Richard ITI (1593) was, in date, a companion 
of the Senecan tragedies of the bloodthirsty Kyd and the bombastic 
Marlowe, and of Peele’s chronicle play Edward J. Its superiority to any 
of these is obvious. Its stichomythia is worth looking at in some detail. 
The scene between Richard and Anne, I, 2, is throughout in a spirit of 
agonistic line-dialogue, though the strict form is preserved only here 
and there in groups of two to six lines. Taunting balance of phrase 
reaches here the height which it attained in France: 


STICHOMYTHIA IN LATER DRAMA 81 


R.: Fairer than tongue can name thee, let me have 
Some patient leisure to excuse myself. 

A.: Fouler than heart can think thee, thou canst make 
No excuse current, but to hang thyself. 

or: 

R.: It isa quarrel most unnatural 
To be revenged on him that loveth you. 

A.: It is a quarrel just and reasonable 
To be revenged on him that slew my husband. 


Catchwords are harped on in the lines that follow these: 


R.: He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband 

Did it to help thee to a better husband. 

His better does not breathe upon the earth. 

He lives that loves you better than he could. 

and: : 
Why dost thou spit at me? 

Would it were mortal poison, for thy sake! 

Never came poison from so sweet a place. 

Never hung poison on a fouler toad. 

Out of my sight! thou dost infect my eyes. 

R.: Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine. 


eta ts ἘΞ te 


Seneca’s gnomic phrase occurs: 


R.: But shall I live in hope?—A.: All men, I hope, live so. 
R.: Vouchsafe to wear this ring—A.: To take is not to give. 


But in the main the dialogue is concrete and specific as in the Greek. 
Richard is sufficiently master of himself and the situation to give a 
whimsical turn to his remarks, his subtlety matching the bluntness of 
Anne. That he realizes the artificiality of the dialogue is shown by his 


words: 
But, gentle Lady Anne, 


To leave this keen encounter of our wits 
And fall somewhat into a slower method. 


Finally, the heated dialogue, as so often in Greek and Latin, ends with 
ashort antilabé. Even more striking is the scene, IV, 4, between Richard, 
now king, and Elizabeth, Anne’s mother. Here are fewer, but longer, 
groups of stichomythia, one running to thirty lines (with an interruption) 
and ending in antilabé by interruption. Cf. for the points illustrated 


above: 
R.: So long as heaven and nature lengthen it. 


E.: So long as hell and Richard likes of it. 


82 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


or: 


To save her life, I’ll say she is not so. 
Her life is only safest in her birth. 


All unavoided is the doom of destiny. 
True, when avoided grace makes destiny. 


bie te be yb ἢῸ 


Continued construction of the true Greek sort: 


bi by by bo δ. ἢῸ 


To wail the title as her mother does. 


Antilabé by interruption: 
R.: Now, by the world— 
R.: My father’s death— 
R.: Then, by myself— 
R.: Why then, by God— 


Say I, her sovereign, am her subject love. 
But she, your subject, loathes such sovereignty. 


Wrong not her birth; she is of royal blood. 


And only in that safety died her brothers. 
Lo, at their births good stars were opposite. 
No, to their lives bad friends were contrary. 


Infer fair England’s peace by this alliance. 
Which she shall purchase with still lasting war. 
Say that the king, which may command, entreats. 
That at her hands which the king’s King forbids. 
Say she shall be a high and mighty Queen. 


’Tis full of thy foul wrongs. 
Thy life hath that dishonour’d. 
Thyself thyself misusest. 
God’s wrong is most of all. 


Much of this stichomythia differs in tone from the classical by 
reason of the open sarcasm which runs through it. In this, as in the 
earlier scene, the concreteness of phrase in the dialogue makes it more 
Greek than Senecan. In II, 2, is one other thing of interest, a parallel 


lament, practically a kommos: 


Eliz.: Oh, for my husband, for my dear lord Edward! 
Chil.: Oh, for our father, for our dear lord Clarence! 
Duch.: Alas for both, both mine, Edward and Clarence! 
Eliz.: What stay had I but Edward? and he’s gone. 
Chil.: What stay had we but Clarence? and he’s gone. 
Duch.: What stays had I but they? and they are gone. 


Eliz.: Was never widow had so dear a loss. 


Chil.: Were never orphans had so dear a loss. 


Duch.: Was never mother had so dear a loss. 


Cf. the lament of son, father, and king in King Henry VI, Part III, Il, 5, 
the parallel conversations in Love’s Labour’s Lost, or the kommos in 


Jonson’s The Case is Altered (1597), V, 6, 41 fi. 


STICHOMYTHIA IN LATER DRAMA 83 


From the other plays I have selected a score of short passages 
typical of Shakespeare’s use of stichomythia, which I quote with merely a 
brief comment as to classification. 

Simple question and answer: Henry IV, Part II, IV, 4, Clarence 
and King Henry: 

Clar.: I shall observe him with all care and love. 

K.H.: Why art thou not at Windsor with him, Thomas ἢ 
Clar.: He is not there today; he dines in London. 
K.H.: And how accompanied? canst thou tell that ? 
Clar.: With Poins and other his continual followers. 
K.H.: Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds; .. . 


A variation of this in oracles: Henry VI, Part II, 1, 4, Bolingbroke 
and Spirit: 
Bol.: First of the king: what shall of him become ἢ 
Spirit: The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose; 
But him outlive, and die a violent death. 
Bol.: What fates await the Duke of Suffolk ? 
Spirit: By water he shall die and take his end. 
Bol.: | What shall befall the Duke of Somerset ? 
Spirit: Let him shun castles; .... 


Continued construction: Richard II, II, 1, Northumberland, Ross, 
and Willoughby: 
North.: Well lords, the Duke of Lancaster is dead. 
Ross: _ And living, too; for now his son is duke. 
Will.: Barely in title, not in revenues. 
North.: Richly in both, if justice had her right. 


Catchwords: Julius Caesar, II, τ: 


Brutus: — A piece of work that will make sick men whole. 
Ligarius: But are not some whole that we must make sick ? 


Julius Caesar, V, τὶ 


Brutus: Words before blows: is it so, countrymen ? 
Octavius: Not that we love words better, as you do. 

Brutus: Good words are better than bad strokes, Octavius. 
Antony: In your bad strokes, Brutus, you give good words. 


Catchwords, and question answering question: Midsummer Night’s 
Dream, III, 2, Hermia and Lysander: 


Her.: But why unkindly didst thou leave me so? 

Lys.: Why should he stay whom love doth press to go? 
Her.: What love could press Lysander from my side? 
Lys.: Lysander’s love, that would not let him bide.... . 


84 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


Harping on words and riddling: Richard II, Il, τ, Gaunt and King 
Richard: 
Gaunt: I mock my name, great king, to flatter thee. 
K.R.: Should dying men flatter with those that live ? 
Gaunt: No, no, men living flatter those that die. 
K.R.: Thou, now a-dying, say’st thou flatterest me. 
Gaunt: Oh, no! thou diest, though I the sicker be. 
K.R.: Iam in health, I breathe, and see thee ill. 
Gaunt: Now, He that made thee knows I see thee ill. 


Taunting balance: Hamlet, III, 4, Queen and Hamlet: 


Queen: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. 
Hamlet: Mother, you have my father much offended. 
Queen: Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue. 
Hamlet: Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.t 


Balance without taunt: King Lear, I, 1, Lear and Cordelia: 


Lear: So young, and so untender ? 
Cor.: So young, my lord, and true.? 


Balance of amoebean type: Midsummer Night’s Dream, I, 1, 
Hermia and Helena: 


Her.: I frown upon him, yet he loves me still. 

Hel.: © that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill! 
Her.: I give him curses, yet he gives me love. 

Hel.: O that my prayers could such affection move! 

Her.: The more I hate, the more he follows me. 

Hel.: The more I love, the more he hateth me. 

Her.: His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine. 

Hel.: None, but your beauty: would that fault were mine! 


Balance in parody (cf. Jacob and Esau, above, p. 73): Antony and 
Cleopatra, 111, 2, Agrippa and Enobarbus: 


Agrip.: ’Tis a noble Lepidus. 
Enob.: A very fine one: O, how he loves Caesar! 


Cf. Eur. Medea, 1363-64, Jason and Medea: 
Jason: ὦ τέκνα, μητρὸς ws κακῆς éxvpoare, 
Medea: ὦ παῖδες, ὡς ὥλεσθε πατρῴᾳ νόσῳ. 


Aesch. Septem., 1042-45, Herald and Antigone: 
Her.: αὐδῶ πόλιν σε μὴ βιάζεσθαι τάδε. 
Antig.: αὐδῶ σε μὴ περισσὰ κηρύσσειν ἐμοί. 
Her.: τραχύς γε μέντοι δῆμος ἐκφυγὼν κακά. 
Antig.: τραχὺς δ᾽ ἄθαπτος οὗτος οὐ γενήσεται; 


2Cf. Prom. Bound, 69-70, Hephaestus and Kratos: 


Heph.: ὁρᾷς θέαμα δυσθέατον ὄμμασιν, 
Krat.: ὁρῶ κυροῦντα τόνδε τῶν ἐπαξίων, 


STICHOMYTHIA IN LATER DRAMA 8 5 


Agrip.: Nay, but how dearly he adores Mark Antony! 
Enob.: Caesar? Why he’s the Jupiter of men. 
Agrip.: What’s Antony? The god of Jupiter. 

Enob.: Spake you of Caesar? How! the nonpareil! 
Agrip.: O Antony! O, thou Arabian bird! .... 


Gnomic utterances (the best perhaps, Henry VJ, Part I, IV, 5, is 
too long to quote): Merchant of Venice, 1V, τ, Bassanio and Shylock: 


Bass.: Do all men kill the things they do not love ? 

Shy.: Hates any man the thing he would not kill? 
(Yankee question) 

Bass.: Every offence is not a hate at first. 

Shy.: What, wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice ? 


Subtlety of metaphor, usually in love scenes: Antony and Cleo- 
patra, I, τ: 
Cleo.: Τί it be love indeed, tell me how much. 
Ant.: There’s beggary in the love that can be reckon’d. 
Cleo.: I'll set a bourn how far to be belov’d. 
Ant.: Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth. 


Cf. the parody on the allusive, metaphorical style in Midsummer 
Night’s Dream, V, 1, Pyramus and Thisbe: 


Pyr.: My love thou art, my love I think. 

Thisbe: Think what thou wilt, I am thy lover’s grace; 
Pyr.: And like Limander am I trusty still. 

Thisbe: And I like Helen, till the Fates me kill. 

Pyr.: | Not Shafalus to Procrus was so true. 

Thisbe: As Shafalus to Procrus, I to you. 


False tragic irony (where one speaker deliberately veils his language 
and the other takes only the surface meaning): Henry VI, Part III, 
III, 1, Henry and the Gamekeeper: 

H.: And men may talk of kings and why not I? 
G.: Ay, but thou talk’st as if thou wert a king. 
H.: Why, so Iam in mind; and that’s enough. 
G.: But if thou be a king, where is thy crown ? 
H.: My crown is in my heart, not on my head. 


Twelfth Night, 111, 1, Olivia and Violet (as Caesario): 


Oliv.: I prithee, tell me what thou think’st of me. 
Vio.: That you do think you are not what you are. 
Oliv.: If I think so I think the same of you. 


86 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


Vio.: Then think you right: I am not what I am. 
Oliv.: I would you were as I would have you be! 
Vio.: Would it be better, madam, than I am? 


Trony:* Antony and Cleopatra, 11, 2, Antony and Enobarbus: 
Ant.: Thou art a soldier only: speak no more. 
Enob.: That truth should be silent I had almost forgot. 
Ant.: You wrong this presence; therefore speak no more. 
Enob.: Go to, then; your considerate stone. 


Dramatic asides are best illustrated (aside from individual lines) by 
a passage too long to quote, Henry VI, Part I, V, 3, where Margaret’s 
remarks are all unheeded asides and Suffolk’s are mere soliloquy. It 
is very like Eur. Hecuba 736-51, in which the soliloquy is Hecuba’s, the 
unnoticed remarks Agamemnon’s. Such an interruption as Macbeth’s 
in Act V, scene 3, 


There is ten thousand— Geese, villain? Soldiers, sir. 


is not very different from Ajax 875-76, 


ἔχεις οὖν;  [or—] 


πόνου γε πλῆθος, κοὐδὲν εἰς ὄψιν πεσόν. 


or Eur. Supp. 818, Adrastus and Chorus, 
Adr.: ἔχεις, ἔχεις---- Ch.: πημάτων γ᾽ ἅλις Bapos.? 


I have not quoted at all from one of the longest and best line-dialogues 
in Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part III, II, 2, King Edward’s wooing of 
Lady Grey. This differs from most classical stichomythia in that one 
of the two speakers is working throughout toward a definite end (cf., 
however, Hippol. go fi.), but contains most of the devices of the classical 
dramatists. 


t See also p. 48, n. 1. 
2Cf. Philoc. 210; Cyclops 683. 


CHAPTER VI 


STICHOMYTHIA IN MODERN DIALOGUE 


The use of stichomythia by Shakespeare’s dramatic successors is 
less interesting to study, because it is so manifestly an artificial product. 
The development of stichomythic tendencies in modern prose dialogue 
is worth studying, though it centers pretty closely about one man, 
George Meredith. Indeed, it might well be called a rediscovery rather 
than a development. However, I shall merely quote here two comments 
on Meredith’s dialogue,t one of which sounds like a description of 
Sophocles’ style, the other, of Seneca’s. LeGallienne, George Meredith: 
Some Characteristics, pp. 45 f., says: 

And it is a mistake to think that he can only write the subtle epigram- 
matical conversation of some of his sublimated types, for he is no less successful 
in those encounters where words follow each other like blows. One quality 
of his dialogue to which James Thomson has drawn attention is its atmosphere. 
Missing this, one must often miss meaning as well. Mr. Meredith has observed 
that two talking do not speak to the mere words uttered, but to all the nuances 
that accompany them, and then the various niceties of impression in the mind 
of the one addressed must be taken into account; so that without sense of the 
atmosphere, and ability to use one’s imagination a little, the connection 
between question and answer is not always obvious. One must have some 
intuition for secondary meanings, and come prepared to make a running 
interpretative gloss underneath the mere words as we read. 


On the other hand, for William Watson (National Review, October, 
1889) his dialogue “15 not dialogue, but a series of mental percussions; 
its hard staccato movement and brittle snip-snap . . . . tires the reader.” 
At any rate such dialogues as the famous “‘ Dainty rogue in porcelain”’ 
passage in the Egoist are as truly stichomythia as anything in Greek. 

I have said nothing of stichomythia in modern imitations of classic 
drama by such writers as Goethe, Browning, Swinburne, Arnold, because 
it throws no light on the problem of the appeal of stichomythia to the 
Greek mind, and for a further reason which may best be given in Lowell’s 
words, exaggerated though these are: 

To take lesser matters, since the invention of printing and the cheapening 
of books have made the thought of all ages and nations the common property 


t For an example of that dialogue see p. 43. 
87 


88 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


of educated men, we cannot so dis-saturate our minds of it as to be keenly 
thrilled in the modern imitation by those commonplaces of proverbial lore 
in which the chorus and secondary characters are apt to indulge, though in 
the original they may interest us as being natural and characteristic. In the 
German-silver of the modern we get something of this kind, which does not 
please us the more by being cut up into single lines that recall the outward 
semblance of some pages in Sophocles. We find it cheaper to make a specimen 
than to borrow one. 


Chorus: Foolish who bites off nose, his face to spite. 
Outis.: Who fears his fate, him Fate shall one day spurn. 
Chorus: The gods themselves are pliable to Fate. 
Outis.: The strong self-ruler owns no other sway. 
Chorus: Sometimes the shortest way goes most about. 
Outis.: Why fetch a compass, having stars within ? 
Chorus: A shepherd once, I know that stars may set. 
Outis.: That thou led’st sheep fits not for leading men. 
Chorus: To sleep-sealed eyes the wolf-dog barks in vain. 


We protest that we have read something very like this, we will not say where, 
and we might call it the battledoor and shuttlecock style of dialogue, except 
that the players do not seem to have any manifest relation to each other, but 
each is intent on keeping his own bit of feathered cork in the air.t 


Stichomythia as a form has had its day, but it has left its heritage 
with us in the prose dialogue of drama and the “ Meredithian”’ dialogue 
of fiction. 


t Review of Swinburne’s Tragedies (1866), Riverside ed., II, 137. 


INDEXES 


‘ Beri, vy bee en 

PAR ani is Age i hi fx 
(pe amie MD ᾿ m Ἄν ay ὯΝ 
ὌΝ Ry ἐν hiss iat ea com 


ὌΝ 


Ἧς γ᾽ Ν, ᾿ 
ὃ πὰ Ὁ! h 
yer ΔΝ ANS) SF 


iat ay 
᾿ Has aan 
. ἴων νὴ s 


SMUT Pe par Ne Vi ad 


'? 


ul 1 af 


ri 


πω "ἢ ἢ 





GENERAL INDEX 


Aeschylus, estimate of stichomythia in, 
10. 

Affirmatives, explicit, 29, 54 f. 

Agamemnon, stichomythia in, 8. 

᾿Αγών, the, between Hesiod and Ho- 
mer, 1 f. 

Agon, stichomythia ending, regular usage, 
12 and n. 3, 21, 81. 

Agonistic spirit: in Greek literature, 1-4, 
5; instichomythia, 1, 2,5, 10, 16, 21 f., 
25, 35 N. 1, 53, 73, 80f. 

Ajax, analysis of stichomythia in, 12 f. 

Alamanni, Luigi, 64, 65, 66 f. 

Alcestis, analysis of stichomythia in, 16 f. 

Alcidamas, of Elea, author of the 
᾿Αγών, τ. 

Alexander and Campas pe, Lyly’s, 76. 

ἀλλά, 26 f., 54; at beginning of prayer, 
27n. 2; defiant, 27; =“‘What!—,” 27 
and nn. 3 and 4; 32 n. 2; yielding 
a point, 27 and n. 1. 

Allusiveness, 23 and n. 3; 24, 47, 590, 88. 

Amoebean stichomythia, 76, 84. 

Anguillara, Andrea dell’, 66. 

Antigone, Alamanni’s, 64, 65. 

Antigone, analysis of stichomythia in, 
ἜΤ 

Antigone, Garnier’s (quoted), 69. 


Antilabé, 5, 11,12,13,15, 19, 21 andn.1, 
23 and n. 1. 


Antiphonal appeal or lament, 6, 7, 8, 


12, 15, 18, 33, 38, 42, 65, 73, 82, 

841: 

apa, absence of, 28. 

Aretino, Pietro, 64. 

Ariosto, 64. 

Aristophanes: Acharnians 10097 ff., 71, 
75; agony in, 25: Peace. 1001, 503 
translation by Ronsard, 67. 

ea anepinient of Paris, Peele’s (quoted 76), 
751. 

Artificiality, 9 f., 15, 10, 21; 22, 24, 40, 
67,77 0. I, 78, 81. 

Assonance, final, 34 n. 2. 

Asyndeton, 24, 28 f., 55, 75. 


ΟΙ 


Bacchylides, xviii, 1. 
Balance (or imitation of form), 7, 9, 18, 


33-35, 37-39, 56, 66, 67, 68f., 73, 78, 
70, 80 ff., 84. 


Bale, John, 71. 

Baptistes, Buchanan’s, 63. 

Bibliography, iii. 

Boas, F. S., University Drama in the 
Tudor Age, 62 f. 


Breaking up of stichomythia in trans- 
lation, 65, 70. 


Browning, Balaustion’s Adventure (on 
Alces. 708 ff.) (quoted), 12 n. 3. 


Buchanan, George, 63, 64. 


Calandria, Dovizio’s, 64. 

Campbell, Plato’s Sophist and Politicus, 
40 n. 4. 

Cambyses, Preston’s 77. 

Canace, Sperone’s, 66. 

Categorical answers, 31, 33, 35 f., 41, 55 f. 

Catchword quoted, 37 f. 

Catchword, virtual, 25 n. 1, 36-30, 44, 


55,571. 
Catchwords, 6, 7, 9, 18, 20, 24 f., 25, 32 


N. 2, 35-30, 43-45, 50 ff., 68, 70, 72, 
75, 70, 81 and 83 (passages quoted). 


Changes or emendations discussed, 6, 11, 
18, 10 N. I, 20, 39, 40 N. 3, 41, 45 Π.1, 
48,55 nN. 2, 78n. 5. 

Choephori, stichomythia in, 8 f. 


Choral responsion, iii, 1, 5, 7f., 9 ἢ. 1, 
62) τ ,2.,.,ὁ- 


Christopherson, John, 62. 

Church litanies, 62. 

Cid, Le, 69 f. 

Cinna, Corneille’s, 70. 

Cinthio, Giraldi, 66. 

Cléopdtre, Jodelle’s, 67. 

Clitandre, Corneille’s, 70. 

Collier, English Dramatic Poetry, 72 n. 4. 
Collins, Churton, 77 and n. 1. 

Continued construction, 11, 17, 20, 24, 


25, 31-33, 32 N. 2, 43-45, 55 i 82, 83, 
quoted. 


92 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


Continued construction, by same speaker 
in antilabé, 19, 21, 32 n. 2, 41 f. 


Corneille, Pierre, 69 f. 
Coventry Plays, 71. 
Croiset, description of stichomythia by, 


Io. 
Cunliffe, J. W., 65 nn. 1 and 2; 66, 77 f. 


δέ, with word for further definition, 67, 
32n.2; initems, 26, 29 n.4; in Plato, 53. 

δή and δῆτα, 30, 37, 55. 

Defiant retort, 55, 79. 

Deictic article, 37 f. 

De Nugis Curialium, Mape’s, 61. 

Dialectic, Sophists’ use of, 50 f. 

Dichotomous question, 41, 59. 

Dido, Gager’s, 63. 

Didon Se Sacrifiant, Hardy’s, 69. 

Didon Se Sacrifiant, Jodelle’s, 67. 

Distichomythia, 5, 9, 13, 69, 70, 74, 78. 

Dithyramb, lyric, dialogue in, 1. 

Dodsley-Hazlitt, Old English Plays, 71 
n. 3, and ff. 

Dolce, 65. 

Dovizio, 64. 

Dramatic asides, 9, 11, 16, 20, 21, 25, 
31 £., 32 . 2, 40, 4 f., 73, 85, 82, δῦ: 

Dramatic suspense, Ig ἢ. 3, 40, 58. 


Earle, 28 n. 2, 44 ἢ. I. 

Early English Drama Society, 71. 

Ecerinis, Mussato’s, 61. 

Edip po, dell’ Anguillara’s, 66. 

Edward I, Peele’s, 79, 80. 

ἢ καί, 29 and n. 3, 30, 53; with ἀλλά, 27. 

Ellipsis, grammatical, 9, 21, 24, 30 f., 
32 n. 2, 43 ἢ, 54. 

Ellipsis, thought, 20, 24, 42 ff., 55. 

Electra, analysis of stichomythia in, 13 f. 

Entrance of new speaker, 11, 12. 

Epigram, tendency to, 8, 9, 13, 21, 23 and 
N. 2, 24, 46, 59, 63, 68, 73 f., 81, 85, 88. 

Epithet, 60, 74. 

L’ Eugéne, Jodelle’s, 67. 

Eumenides, stichomythia in, 9. 


Euripides, estimate of stichomythia in, 
21 f. 


Evasion, 21, 48, 55. 

Everyman (and seven other plays named), 
71. 

Extra-metrical words, 11 and n. 1. 


False tragic irony, 15, 47, 59, 85 £. 
Farmer, J. S., 71 n. 4. 


Flagg, Isaac, 14 n. 1; 
40 ἢ. 2. 


Flora, Alamanni’s, 64. 


IQ NN: 2,3; 22n. 1; 


Gager, William, 63. 
Gammer Gurton’s Nedle, 75. 


Garnier, Robert, Antigone, M. Antoine, 
Cornélie, Hippolyte, Les Juives, Porcie, 
La Troade, Bradamanite, 68 f., 78. 

γάρ, in ellipsis, 27 and nn. 6, 7,8; 28and 
mn. I, 2,3; 31; 32D. 2; 545 in ques- 
tions, 54; γάρ or yap ουν with repeated 
word, 54. 

Gayley, Representative English Comedies, 
71 1. 3; 74 DN. 3, 4. 

γέ, elliptical, 27 and ἢ. 5; 37f.,54; argu- 
mentative, 6. 

Giocasta, Dolce’s, 65. 

Gnomic utterances, 6, 8, 9, 13, 18, 21, 
23 and n. 2, 24, 29, 42, 46, 59, 63, 68, 
73 {., 81, 85, 88. 

Goligher (in Hermathena, XXXIV, 216 
ἢ). 27. 

Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex, 77. 

Greene, Robert, 79. 


Gross, Adolf (Die Stichomythie in der 
griechischen Tragédie und Komédie, 
ihre Anwendung und ihr Ursprung, 
Berlin, 1905), definition of stichomy- 
thia by, iii, 1 n. I, 5, 13 and n. 1, 20 
τι: αὖ 25 ΠῚ. 97 Det; 50 τοῦ τὸ ee as 


Hardy, Alexandre, 69. 

Harping on words, 14, 37, 39, 84. 
Hauvette, Luigi Alamannt, 66. 
Heywood, John, 74 

Hippolytus, stichomythia in, 18. 
History of Jacob and Esau, 72, 73. 
Homer, the agonistic in, 1. 

Horace, Corneille’s, 70. 

Hrosvitha, imitations of Terence, 61. 
Hughes, Misfortunes of Arthur, 78. 


᾿Ιεφθάε, Christopherson’s, 62. 

Imitation of Greek dramatists, 62, 65, 66, 
69, 78. 

Imitation of Seneca, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 
67, 68 nn. 2, 3; 69, 70, 72, 73, 74) 77 fy 
79. 

Ingannati, Gl’, 63. 


INDEXES 93 


Interlocutor, one speaker serving as, 
8 τὶ, I, ΤῸ and n. 3. 


Interruption, 9, ΤΙ, 16, 20, 21, 25, 31 f., 
B22, 40, 40 iz, 753, 81, 52, OO: 

Ion, stichomythia in, το f. 

Iphigeneia in Aulis, stichomythia in, 21. 

I aes in Tauris, stichomythia in, 
18 f. 

Trony, 48 f., 59 f., 86; in parody, 73, 84 f. 


Irregularity of dialogue in Sophocles, 
tof., 14, 15, 16. See also ‘‘Linked 
verses.” 


Jack Jugler, 75. 

James IV, Greene’s (quoted), 79. 

Jebb, Richard, to f. and n. 3; 14; 26and 
Ne 3: 07 ΠΠῚ τ 4. 5, ὃ, ὃ; 25 τὶ. 2; 20. mn» 
ity 2 Sik Η ἘΦ aR 27 ΠῚ 2: 29): 1 
39 N. I, 43 π. 4. 

Jephthes, Buchanan’s, 63, 64. 

Jeronimo, by Kyd (9), 78. 

Jerram, 34 n. 2. 

Jodelle, Estienne, 67. 

Johan Johan, Heywood’s, 74. 

Juives, Les, Garnier’s, quoted, 68 f. 


καί, 26, 29, 53; of surprise, 25, 29, 30, 
53; kal ye, 26, 53; καὶ δή, 37 and n. 2; 
καὶ μήν, 26, 37, 38 and ἢ. 1, 53; καὶ 
μήν γε, 26, 53; καὶ πῶς, 29 and n. 4, 30. 


Kommos, involving stichomythic detail, 
6, 12, 14, 20 and n. I. 


Kyd, Thomas, 78, 8ο. 
Kynge Johan, Bale’s (quoted 72), 71 f. 


Laelia, Gager’s, 63. 

Law courts, Athenian, 3, 9 ἢ. 2, 44 ἢ. I. 
LeGallienne, Richard, on Meredith, 87. 
Legge, Thomas, 62. 

‘Linked verses,” 14 and n. 1, 15. 
Litotes, 49. 

Liturgic stichomythia, τς f., το. 

Loudon, Tancred and Gismunda, 78. 
Lowell, James Russell, 87 f. 

Lyly, John, 75 ff. 


Maccari, Stichomythica, Urbini, 1911, iii. 

Manly, John, Specimens of Pre-Shake- 
spearian Drama, 71 τι. 2. 

Mapes, Walter, 61. 

Mariamne, Hardy’s, 69. 

Marlowe, Christopher, 79. 


Marriage of Wit and Science (quoted 74), 
mats 

Marston, 79. 

Medea, stichomythia in, 17 f. 

Mélite, Corneille’s, 70. 

μὲν οὖν, assent, not correction, 56. 

μέντοι, with catchword, 56. 

μήν, in dialogue, 26, 53. 

Meredith, George, 16, 23, 43, 87. 

Metaphor, continued between speakers, 
25, 58 and n. 1, 85. 

Miracle or mystery plays, 71, 72. 

Misener, on γάρ, 28 n. 3. 

Misfortunes of Arthur, Hughes’s, 78. 

Mitchell, A. G., 63, 64. 

Moliére (four plays named), 70 f. 


Morality plays, 71 ff., 74, 75, 77. See 
also Everyman. 


Mort d’ Alexandre, La, Hardy’s, 69. 

Mort de Daire, La, Hardy’s, 69. 

Motives for stichomythia, 5, 9, 10, 16, 
21 f., 53, 72, 73) 75, 76, 80. 

Moulton, ΚΕ. G., 12 n. 3. 

Mussato, Albertino, 61. 


Negatives, explicit, 29, 54 f. 
Neil, appendix to Knights, 27. 
Norton and Sackville, Gorboduc, 77. 


Octavia of Seneca( ?), stichomythia in, 23. 
Oedipus Coloneus, stichomythia in, 15 f. 
Oedipus Tyrannus, stichomythia in, 13. 
Orbecche, Cinthio’s, 66. 

Oresteia triology, stichomythia in, 2, 8 f. 
Orestes, Rucellai’s, 66. 

Orestes, stichomythia in, 20 f. 

οὖν, absence of, 28. 


Paley, Po AG, 20 π: 4. 24 n 2. 


Participle, in continued construction, 31 
and n. I. 


Particles, Greek, 26-31. 

Patin, Les Tragiques Grecs, το τι. 5. 

Peele, George, 75 f. 

Persae, stichomythia in, 2, 7 f. 

Philoctetes, stichomythia in, 15. 

Platonic dialogue, 16, 29, 40 and n. 4, 
50 ff. 

Plautus, 64, 74, 75- 

“Pleiad,”’ 67. 


94 STUDIES IN STICHOMYTHIA 


motos, sarcastic or incredulous, 37. 

Pollux IV, 113 defines stichomythia, 5. 

Polyeucte, Corneille’s, 70. 

Pose, dramatic, of Socrates, 51 f. 

πῶς οὖν and πῶς δῆτα, 30, 39. 

Preston, Thomas, 77. 

Prometheus: artificiality of dialogue indi- 
cates late date, 9; stichomythia in, 
2, of. 

Eee ss 64,76; 77 n= 1. 80; 

iia 

Punning, 21, 36, 44 ἢ. 2, 59. 


Question-and-answer stichomythia, 5 f., 
7, 8, 12, 13, 17, 19, 73, 83- 

“Quibbling,” 2, 17, 18, 24, 42, 45, 47.; 
53- 


Racine, [phigénie and Phédre, 70. 

Ralph Roister Doister, Udall’s, 74 f. 

Rhoda Fleming, Meredith’s, 43 n. 2. 

Rhymed verse, 67 f., 72, 77, 78. 

Richardus Tertius, Legge’s, 62. 

ἘΠ veils δ Oe ΒΤ, 412. AO ls. 15S Le. 
4. 


Ritter, Platon, 53 n. 1; 54 π. 1. 
Ronsard, Pierre, 67. 
Rosmunda, Rucellai’s, 65 f. 
Rucellai, 65 f. 


Sarcasm, 17, 25, 42, 48 f., 72, 82. 
Seneca, estimate of stichomythia in, 23 ff. 
Seneca, imitates Antigone 737 f., 46. 
Seneca, imitation of. See Imitation. 


Seven against Thebes, stichomythia in, 
2) 03 Bs 
Shakespeare, 18, 20, 32 n. 1, 38 ἢ. 2, 42 
n. 1, 48 n. 1, 80-86. 
Antony and Cleopatra (1, 1), ὃς; (II, 2), 
86; (III, 2), 84. 
Hamlet (IIT, 4), 84. 
Henry IV, Part Two (IV, 4), 83. 
Henry VI, Part One (IV, 5),85; (V,3), 
86, 42 n. I. 
Henry VI, Part Two (I, 4), 83. 
Henry VI, Part Three (III, 1), 85; 
(III, 2), 86. 
Julius Caesar (II, 1), 83; (V, 1), 83. 
King Lear (I, 1), 84. 
Love’s Labour’s Lost, 80. 
Macbeth (V, 3), 86. 
Merchant of Venice (IV, 1), 85; (V, 1), 
48 n. I. 


Midsummer Night’s Dream (I, 1), 84; 
(III, 2), 83; (V, 1), 85. 
Richard II (II, 1), 83, 84. 
Richard III (quoted at length), 80 ff. 
Twelfth Night (Ill, 1), ὃς f. 
Shelley, mistranslates Cyclops, 32. 


Slang, English, motives similar to those 
of stichomythia, 1. 


Socrates, use of specious argument by, 2 f. 

Sofonisba, Trissino’s, 65. 

Soliman and Perseda, 78. 

Sophists, 3, 50 f. 

Sophoclean irony, 21, 42, 47, 75- 

Sophocles, estimate of stichomythia in, 
16, 87. 

Spanish Tragedy, Kyd’s, 78. 

Sperone, Speron, 66. 

Stevenson, Gammer Gurton’s Nedle,75 n. 2. 

Stop-gap versés, 7, 17 and ἢ. 2, 19, 20, 
24, 32, 39-42, 47, 58 ἴ., 72. 

Strecker, Karl, 61 n. 2. 

Subtlety: in stichomythia, 42, 72, 87; 
typical of Greeks, 1, 5, 11, 26. See 
also Motives. 

Supplices, of Aeschylus, stichomythia 
1 2, 5 7 Onl 

Suppositi, Ariosto’s, 64. 

Suréna, Corneille’s, 70. 

Swinburne, 87 f. 

Symmetry: in stichomythia, 39, 72 f., 
75; typical of Greeks, 1, 5. See also 
Motives. 


Symonds, J. A., 61 n. 5; 62n.1. 


Talanta, Aretino’s, 64. 

Tancred and Gismunda, Loudon’s, 78. 

τέ, 26 and nn. 2, 3; 53- 

Terence, 61, 64; Phormio 806, 50. 

Theocritus: stichomythic form in, 3f., 
76; iv, Vili, xxii, 3 f. 

Tite et Bérénice, Corneille’s, 70. 

Trachiniae, stichomythia in, 14 f. 

Trissino, 65. 

Trochaic tetrameter, 7, 8, 13, 15, 16 n. I, 
10, 20, 21 and n. I. 


Tucker, on Supplices 291-322, 500 fi., 
6, ) δη ἢ. 1,43 ne 2. 


Tunison, Dramatic Traditions of the 
Middle Ages, 61 and n. 4. 


Udall, Nicholas, 74. 
Ulysses Redux, Gager’s, 63. 


INDEXES 95 


Unconcluded condition (ei—= ‘What, 
if—’’), 25, 30 f. 
University Plays, 62 f., 75. 


Vaughan, Types of Tragic Drama, 19 n. 5, 
21 πὶ 

Verrall, A. W.,8n.1,17n. 2, 340. 2. 

Verses in groups of two or four, 18, 20, 
33, 37: 


Ward, A. W., History of English Dra- 
matic Literature, 23 τι. τ, 61 ἢ. 1, 68, 
ΣΕ ΓΕ 


Watson, William, on Meredith, 87. 


Wecklein: on Medea 663-708, 17 n. 2; 
Persae 731, 735, 42; Studien zu Euri- 
pides, pp. 343 ff., 24 n. 1. 

Wilamowitz: Analecta Euripidea, p. 195, 
tof. and n. 2; Herakles, Il, Part 2, 
126, 26 n. 1; Hermes, XVIII, 223, 
20 N. I. 


Wright, T., 61 n. 3. 


“Yankee question,” 


83, 85. 


25, 42, 48, 56, 69, 


Zeller, Philosophie der Griechen, quoted 
at length, 52 n. 2. 


INDEX OF GREEK CITATIONS 


(Passages italicized are quoted in original or translation.) 


Aeschylus: 

Agamemnon (268), 39; (539), 36; 
(543), 39; (548), 46; (549), 30; 
(622), 37; (931), 23, 38; (938 f.), 46; 
(942), 38; (944), 27; (1205), 46; 
(1208), 29; (1211 f.), 30; (1300), 46; 
(500). 4.2: (ποτ 50; (agar f.); 
59; (1668), 46, 47. 

Choephori (117-21), 39, 42; (174-78), 
39, 40; (213-18), 39; (220), 27; 
(221), 36; (479-508), 20; (489-07), 
42; (526-32), 30, 40, 42; (767), 39; 
(781), 27; (920 f.), 46; (978 f.), 34; 
(925), 37; (928),42; (1057), 42. 

Eumenides (202 f.), 38; (420), 30, 41; 
(427), 48; (428), 46; (431), 30; 
(590 f.), 58; (503), 413 (590f.), 313 
(601), 39; (602 ff.), 48; (606), 36; 
(711-14), 34; (727-30), 34; (744- 
47), 33,42; (894), 37; (896), 36. 

Persae (715, 719), 41; (731, 735), 42. 

Prometheus Bound (39), 46; (45, 66), 
42; (69f.), 38, 84; (378 ff., 385), 
46; (765), 41; (936), 46; (971-73), 
48, 38; (977 f.), 48, 38; (982 f.), 30. 

Septem (245 ff.), 48; (251-56), 42; 
(255 f.), 33, 34; (716-19), 46; (808), 
42; (1041-45), 39, 34, 84; (1046-53), 
27; (1053), 27. 

Supplices (210, 216), 37; (304), 36; 
(300-313), 39; (335), 41; (336-38), 
46, 48; (438), 37; (456-64), 40, 41, 
46; (466), 42; (510 f.), 30; (924f.), 
34. 

Aristophanes: 
Acharnians (1097 ff.), 71. 
Peace (1061), 59. 


Bacchylides (xviii), τ. 
Euripides: 
Alcestis (38 ff.), 44£.; (54 ff.), 48, 46; 
(58), 27; (141), 46; (381), 46; (485), 
41; (509 ff.), 48; (519 ff.), 41, 46; 
(527 f.), 46; (532), 41; (540 ff.), 46; 
(716), 27; (720), 49; (723f.), 35, 
34; (807), 38; (1078), 46; (1085 f.), 
39, 38, 48; (1126 ff.), 37. 
Andromache (241), 48; (577-80), 88. 
Bacchae (465 fi.), 26; (4γ44.), 48; 
(480), 46; (481), 26; (488), 46; 
(617), 47; (649), 48; (652), 38; 
(796), 49; (814 f.), 36; (818), 27; 


96 


(828-36), 39; (830), 48; (963), 38; 
(966 ff.), 41, 47; (970), 36; (1263), 
41; (1348), 46. 

Cyclops (683), 32, 86. 

Electra (224 f.), 30; (236), 46; (245), 
41; (254), 38; (256f.), 36; (26s), 
46; (352), 46; (564), 41; (569), 36; 
(577), 27; (628), 41; (633), 46; 
(671-84), 42, 43, 37; (904), 29; 
(967 ff.), 37; (972), 46; (983), 48; 
(1131), 47, 46. 

Hecuba (239 ff.), 41; (401), 27; 
(415 ff.), 42; (736-51), 42, 86; 
(785 f.),47, 46; (884), 46; (905), 41; 
(1268), 49; (1272), 4o. 

Helen (94), 46; (98) 48; (138), 46; 
(309 f.), 46; (464), 46; (583), 29; 
(588), 46; (786, 800), 41; (814), 46; 
(816), 41; (1193 ff.), 47; (1201), 36; 
(1212), 29; (1213), 46; (1223), 41; 
(1227), 48; (1238), 41; (1412 ff.), 
47; (1416f.), 33; (1630-39), 32, 
37, 38, 41, 46. 

Heracleidae (252 ff.), 37; (271 f.), 31, 
38; (541 f.), 34; (682f.),31; (773 f.), 
30; (739),49; (965), 36. 

Hercules Furens (93 f.), 46; (538-61), 
30; (543), 40; (548 ff.), 26; (555), 
41; (557), 38; (559 ff.), 47, 48, 46; 
(614), 29; (713 f.), 38, 42; (1128), 
27; (1132), 47; (1133), 46; (1134), 
38; (1138), 29; (1196), 46; (1418), 20. 

Hippolytus (go ff.), 86; (93-103), 
39; (07), 295 (278-87), 2B, 545 
(310 ff.), 48; (317, 319), 38; (337 ff.), 
41,42; (604, 614), 38; (724), 36. 

Ion (286), 46; (301), 41; (303), 40; 
(310, 316), 41; (336f.), 47, 46; 
(368 f.), 34; (537), 46; (956f.), 47, 
46; (969), 46. 

Iphigeneia in Aulis (302 ff.), 34; (305), 
38; (312), 27, 46; (333 1.) 46; (404 ff.), 
24, 38; (407 f.), 46, 47; (513 ff.), 
29, (517), 58; (520), 46; (s522f.), 
59, 41; (640 ff.), 47, 46; (655), 42; 
700), 38; (833), 38; (1132), 48; 
1134 f.), 34, 39, 48. 

Iphigeneia in Tauris (247), 40; 
(402 ff.), 48; (496), 48; (738), 41; 
(804), 49; (1032), 46; (1045), 40; 
(1161), 40; (1170), 27; (1172), 40; 
(1193), 46; (1203 ff.), 41. 


INDEXES 97 


Medea (328 ff.), 42; (330 f.), 46; (606), 
49; (670), 28; (680), 40, 41; (1363f.) 
33, 84; (1368), 48. 

Orestes (748, 772 £., 1115), 46; (1128 [.), 
34; (1182), 46; (1509), 46; (1521), 
38; (1576 f.), 52, 24; (1587f.), 35, 
39, 56; (1606), 32; (1608 f.), 40. 

Phoenissae (385-403), 46; (392-97), 
47; (403), 47; (404f.), 49; (406), 
47; (597, 599), 46; (603 ff.), 32; 
(721, 726f., 731), 46; (13406f.), 31; 
(1675), 47, 46. 

Supplices (113), 41; (119), 46; (124), 
38, 46; (135), 27; (294), 46; (567), 
49; (574), 49; (576f.), 36; (878), 
32, 86; (935), 32, 42; (945), 46. 

Troades (610 ff.), 42; (1051), 46. 

Plato: 

Alcibiades (1068), 50, 57; (100), 54, 
57; (12D), 51. 

Crito (44B), 57. 

Euthydemus (284D), τοῖ.; (2960), 
59; (298A), 59; (2960), 55; (298D), 
56; (301C), 57. 

Euthyphro (6C), 59; (9D), 54; (124), 
58; (14E), 56, 59; (154), 54; (15B), 


57. 
Gorgias (448E), 54; (4490), 54; 
(449E), 55; (453D), 55; (454D), 54; 
(462B), 52; (462C), 59; (462D), 54, 
55; (463D), 59; (467B),55; (467), 
55; (468E), 50; (469C),57; (470A), 
B75 h470D) 55730593 2758) 50; 
(476D), 56; (478BC), 56; (488B), 
54; (459B),55; (491D), 58; (4958), 
57; (495D), 56; (496D),55; (497A), 
58; (497B), 59; (497C), 60; (498D), 
58; (502C), 55; (505C), 55; (506C), 
55; (509D), 56; (5168), 57. 
Hippias (286E), 56. 
(369A), 


Hippias Minor (365D), 57; 
58, 60. 

Laches (184A), 29; (184C), 54; (1850), 
4. 

Mons (78C), 55; (8oBC), 60; (814), το. 

Phaedrus (236C), 56; (257E), 59; 
(260D), 58; (277A), 54. 

Philebus (34D), 59. 

Protagoras (313C), 57; (334C-338E), 
50; (338D), 52. 

Republic (327B), 54; (328D), 53; 


(332A), 56; (333A), 55, 573 (337B), 
57; (338B), 57; (3380), 55; (3308), 


(3307), 56; (340A), 56; 
(341A), 57; (341), 58; (343A), 56; 
(345E), 57; (346D), 55; (348A), 
50; (348C), 59; (350C), 50, 58; 
(351C), 54; (352B), 57; (353A), 
54, 56; (354A), 51, 56; (406B), 59; 
(go8D), 59; (454A), 53; (4848, 
485C), 57; (487A), 47; (499A), 533 
(539BC), 53; (608D), 55. 

Sophist (221), 58; (226C), 57; 
(232D), 54; (242B), 58; (243A), 58; 
(249A), 53; (240), 58; (250), 57. 

Symposium (199B), 50. 

Theaetetus (142A), 54, 56; (146D), 50; 
(1534), 54; (153B), 56; (167E), 53. 

Pollux (IV, 113), 5. 

Sophocles: 

Ajax (38-50), 30; (702; 794), 38; 
(875 f.), 32,86; (1051), 31; (1125 ff.), 
37: (EISO), 282-4 {({259 τὴ») 70; 
(1360 f.), 30. 

Antigone (48), 27; (315 ff.), 48; (512), 
36; (522f.), 35, 39; (544-47), 353 
(564 £.), 36; (569, 571), 46; (729 f.), 
36, 375) (759. ΠΠπ}} 28: (733 ft), 37; 
(735 £.), 48; (737£.), 46; (740/f.), 
48; 3 }} Gos CEO4G—51) “0; 
(1055 f.), 46. 

Electra (236), 29; (387), 27; (393), 49, 
28; (397), 36; (308), 46; (795 ff.), 
373. (879), 27: (944), 27; (zo2z ff), 
43£.; (1028), 49; (1031 f.), 35, 373 
(1037), 37; (1042), 46; (1102), 41; 
(i110), 385) {τττ2}» 40; {1172 ἢ), 
425.) (an70 1), 42-" (EOE); 405 
(1219), 46; (1448 ff.), 47. 

Oedipus Coloneus (263), 29; (645), 403 
(395, 592, 808, 1108), 46. 

Oedipus Tyrannus (319), 26; (438, 
961), 46; (445), 37; (547-52), 34, 
50} (622 i); 92450355) 75750293 
(993), 41; (994), 31; (1004), 38; 
(τοτο f.), 30; (1040), 31; (1066 f.), 
49; (2117); 27; (2520); 27- 

Philoctetes (100 f.), 34; (108 ff.), 34; 
(210), 86; (414), 27; (641), 46; 
(651), 28; (895 ff.), 42; (910 f.), 
42; (1222 ff.), 41; (1225), 38; (1231), 
40; (7235 f.), 48; 38; (2251); 38; 
(1383), 46, 48. 

Trachiniae (335), 27; (393 ff.), 48; 
(416), 49; (1179), 27; (1211), 27. 

Theocritus (iv, v77z, xxiz), 3 f. 


59, 55) 





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